


The Only Moment We Were Alone

by nocturneblack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Light Angst, Loss of Parent(s), Minor Character Death, POV Gendry, Past Drug Use, Romance, Sexual Content, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-09-23 12:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9657011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocturneblack/pseuds/nocturneblack
Summary: Gendry Waters thought his life was relatively simple. The death of his absent father is about to challenge that notion, along with the sudden reappearance of Arya Stark in his life.





	1. Mya Stone

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this modern AU has been in my head for ages. It's pretty Gendry-centric but also focuses heavily on a relationship between Gendry and Arya. Right now I'm imagining it'll be around 5 or 6 chapters, but that could change. In this story Gendry is 24 and Arya is 19.  
> Title is the title of a song by Explosions in the Sky.

Gendry’s phone had rung twice that morning. Twice the sound of the phone vibrating against the wooden night stand had roused him from sleep, twice he had checked the number, silenced the call, and rolled back onto his side.

Mya Stone was the name that appeared twice on the screen. He’d saved her number when she’d called him a month ago, when she had asked if his name was Gendry Waters and told him she was his half-sister. He hadn’t known what to say to her, and he hadn’t said much, but when she told him his father— their father— wanted to meet him, he had told her to go to hell.

Gendry didn’t know if the call was legitimate, if the woman really was his half-sister and if his father, a man he had only ever known in name, had really wanted to meet him. When his phone began to ring for the third time he considered the possibility that Mya Stone was telling the truth. He picked up the phone on the fourth ring.

“Yeah?” His voice was brusque; he didn’t take kindly to his sleep being disturbed on his day off.

“Hi, is this Gendry?” It was the same voice from a month ago, and she sounded just as unsure as the first time they talked.

“Yes.”

“Right, we talked briefly about a month ago—”

“I remember,” he cut across her. He had never been great at conversation, and was even less prone to small talk before noon.

“Ah. Right,” she said awkwardly. “Look I know you made it clear that you don’t want to be bothered, and that’s fine.” There was a long pause, and Gendry waited for her to continue.

“I just didn’t want to tell you over a voicemail… our father has passed away.” Her voice seemed shaky but resolute.

Any hope for drifting back to sleep was quashed as Mya Stone’s words washed over him. He sat up in bed, feeling suddenly wide awake.

“He’s dead?” he asked slowly.

“Yes, I’m sorry to tell you over the phone like this, but I didn’t know how else to get ahold of you.”  


Gendry was silent. Robert Baratheon ( _the man, the myth, the legend_ , he thought wildly, and had to suppress a snort) was dead.

“Look,” she continued after a beat, “do you think that maybe we could meet? There’s a lot that we should talk about.”

“I… yeah. Yeah, let’s do that,” he agreed, and got out of bed to find a pen and paper.

Mya Stone was a year older than him, and had spent the majority of her life on the coast. She was staying in a hotel that was hundreds of miles south of her home, to attend the upcoming funeral. The hotel was only about an hour from Gendry, and the two agreed to meet halfway, at a fast-food place along the highway.

As he sat down across from her he noted the resemblance between them. Perhaps she should’ve just sent a picture of herself to him to prove their relation— _see? I look just like you, we have the same asshole father!_ Her eyes were bright blue and shaped the same as his, and her hair was dark and thick, matching his. She had stood up to shake his hand when he got there, and he noted how tall she was. At six foot five he dwarfed most women, but Mya Stone seemed less than half a foot shorter than him.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” was the first thing she said after he returned to his seat with the coffee he ordered at the countered.

Gendry considered her words. He had expected her to fill him in, to tell him when and where the funeral was. He wondered if she thought of him as the sad, abandonment-issues type, if she saw him as a heart-broken little boy rather than a mostly apathetic twenty-four-year-old.

“Uh… right. How did you find me?” he asked.

“Well, the internet, naturally,” she said with a slight smile. “He knew your name of course. Knew where you lived. A month ago he asked me to get in touch with you.”

That was new to Gendry; he was unaware that Robert Baratheon had known his name and where he was. He had always thought the man knew of his existence and nothing more.

“So you’re not a bastard, then?” he asked bluntly. She scrunched her eyebrows, probably finding his words offensive.

“Sorry?”

“Was Robert married to your mother? It's just you don’t have his name.”

“No,” she said, looking slightly uncomfortable. “They weren’t married. They never dated, exactly, either.” She looked down at the table, like she was ashamed of it. Gendry had had enough of that to last him a lifetime. He wondered briefly if she came from a middle or upper class background, eyeing the crisp button down shirt and diamond stud earrings she was wearing. People with money seemed to care about that sort of thing a lot more than poor people did.

“Well, same,” he said, wishing that this woman, a stranger but also his sister, would not feel guilt for having been born to a single, unwed mother.

“So how did he find you?” Gendry asked.

“When I was fifteen, my mother was hospitalized for a period of time,” she began. “Robert found out— they were still in contact, I suppose, though she never talked about it— so I went to live with him for a little while, about a year. We’ve always kept in touch since.”

“You knew him.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry, Mya,” he said somewhat awkwardly. To Gendry, Robert Baratheon was a stranger, nothing but a name, but Mya had lost something like a father.

“Thank you,” she said, staring down at her own cup of coffee. The white of her shirt stood out against the deep red vinyl upholstery of the booth they sat in. She looked out of place, like she was more comfortable in boardroom meetings and high-end hotel lobbies than road-side restaurants with cheap, watery coffee.  


“He really helped you and your mom out, huh?” Gendry said, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice.

“Yeah. Yeah, he did,” she said, looking up to meet his eye, perhaps sensing his shift in tone.

“I just find it interesting, you know. My mom died when I was six, and I went to a boys home.”

Mya’s face fell.

“Gendry, I—”

“I never heard from the guy.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at him with pity in her eyes. “I wish I knew why, but…”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, letting the anger dissipate. He had learned at a young age to quickly control his anger, when he was a hot-headed teenager that got in too many fights at school and at the boys home.

There was silence between them for a moment, and Gendry knew that Mya wanted to apologize for the actions of her father, for being the one he chose to be a parent to.

“Do you want to come to the funeral? It’s this Sunday,” she said, running a hand through her shoulder-length hair. “We could drive together if you want.”

“I have to work,” he said automatically, saying the first thing that came to his mind. He had no desire to drive to a funeral home with a woman he barely knew, to sit among a crowd of strangers for the purpose of sending off a dead man he had never even met.  


“I’m sure if you told them it’s your father’s funeral…” she began. He wanted to tell her that Robert Baratheon wasn’t his father, not really, but he knew it would upset her.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, feeling a small amount of guilt for lying.

“I’ll call you,” he said, and they both stood up to leave.

He had no intention of going.

\---x---  


She called him on Saturday night. He told her he wasn’t going.

“I didn’t know him,” he said.

She was sympathetic.

“His lawyer should be in touch with you sometime in the coming week.”

“His lawyer?”

“Yes. Robert left you some money. Quite a lot of money, actually.”

Gendry didn’t know what to say to that. Their call ended shortly after. He glanced around his small, one-bedroom apartment and suddenly felt like a restless animal in a cage. He looked down at his phone. It was eight o’clock. He sent a text to a friend he’d had since childhood, known to all of their friends as Hot Pie, and waited until 8:20. When no reply came he decided he would go and get drunk by himself and regret it in the morning.

There was a bar nearby, and it was fairly quiet for a Saturday night. He sat at the bar and ordered a beer. He just barely paid attention to the football game playing on the TV behind the bar. He heard a woman’s voice to his left, and realized that there was someone sitting just a few stools down from him. He glanced over and immediately wished he hadn’t.

“Gendry?” the woman said. He turned in his seat.

“Hi, Jeyne,” he said, coming face to face with the girl he’d dated for over a year. Her light brown hair was longer than when he’d last seen her, but she had on a striped sweater that was familiar to him. Her kind brown eyes and soft smile were the same as he remembered.

“How have you been?” she asked, her face lighting up. Why was she happy to see him? What kind of person enjoyed running into an ex?

“Good,” he replied by default, though he was unsure of how much truth there was to that statement at the present.

“How are you?” he asked. She walked over so that she could sit at the stool next to his.

“I’m great,” she smiled. “I graduated from my program last year.”

“Congratulations,” he said, raising his drink to her.

“Thank you. I’m teaching at a private school now,” she said, a humble smile on her face.

“That’s great. Big step up from the Center, yeah?”

“In terms of pay, sure,” she said. “But I miss those kids like hell sometimes.”

Gendry nodded. The Riverwalk Center for Foster and at-Risk Youth was where he and Jeyne had met— they had both worked day shifts with the six to ten-year-olds.

“Do you still work there?” she asked.

“Just on Sundays now. I’m at Mott’s full time,” he answered, referring to his job at the small welding company.

“That’s awesome,” she said. “It’s about time you got a position, considering how long you were part time there.”

“Yeah, I’ve been full time for about two years now.”

She sipped at her beer, apparently in no hurry to end their conversation. She rested an elbow on the wooden bar top, occasionally glancing around the half-empty bar.  


“So what else is new with you? It’s been so long,” she said, seeming genuinely interested. He had thought she’d hated him when they broke up, but he figured time— nearly three years of it— had made her warm to him again.

“Well,” he said, not really knowing why he was considering telling her about Mya Stone and Robert Baratheon. One beer was nowhere near enough alcohol to get him even buzzed.

“This is kind of crazy, but… you know how I’ve never met my father but I’ve always known his name?”

Jeyne nodded, her face serious, rapt with attention.

“About a month ago this woman calls me. Says her father is also Robert Baratheon. Says she’s my half-sister.”

Jeyne’s mouth dropped open as her eyes widened.

“Yeah,” he continued. “He was actually sort of a father to her. Took her in as a teenager. Anyways, he died a few days ago.”

“Oh my God. Gendry, I’m so sorry.” Concern was etched on her face, and Gendry was reminded of how motherly she’d always been with the kids at the Center.

“You don’t need to be,” he assured her. He was glad to find that his voice sounded so sure of himself. “I never knew him. It doesn’t really make much of a difference to me.” He tried not to think about the money he was supposedly getting.

“How did he die?” she asked in a small, gentle voice, looking far too upset for Gendry’s comfort.

“I didn’t even ask,” he realized, and laughed lightly at that.

“Are you alright?”

He wished she would stop using that tone of voice.

“Jeyne, seriously, I’m fine,” he assured her.

“What’s new with you?” he asked, hoping to take the focus of the conversation off of his dead father. She paused.

“Aside from the new job… I’m engaged,” she said with a hesitant smile, holding up her left hand.

“Another congratulations,” he said earnestly, raising his now empty glass.

“Thanks. We met at school. We were in the same program. He’s actually on his way here now.”

He idly wondered if that had been her intention the whole time, if she had started a conversation beyond the typical awkward greeting one would give an ex-boyfriend just to tell him she had moved on from him in the biggest way possible.

“I’m happy for you,” he said, and he supposed he meant it; it wasn’t like he was still hung up on her.

“I should head out— I’ve got work in the morning,” he said, standing up and putting a five dollar bill on the bar top. “It was nice seeing you, Jeyne.”

“Yeah, I’m glad we could catch up,” she said, staring up at him as he tugged on his jacket.

He was heading for the door, debating on whether he should go home or to another bar, when the sound of an argument slowed him down. It was between a bouncer and a girl who was most likely under the legal drinking age.

“You can leave or I can call the cops about your fake ID,” the bouncer, a man nearly as tall as Gendry, was saying. Gendry looked at the angry expression on the girl’s face and was struck by how familiar she was. Just as she turned to leave he realized who she was. He wasn't surprised it took him a moment to place her face; he hadn't seen her in years. He followed quickly behind her, pushing through the door and into the cool fall air.

“Trying to pass for twenty-one?” he called to her as soon as they had both exited the bar. The girl whipped around, her long, dark brown hair flying out behind her as she fixed him with a harsh glare. The color and shape of her eyes confirmed her identity to him.

“You can piss off,” she said, but her sharp words dropped off at the end, just as the recognition dawned in her grey eyes.

“Gendry?” she said, her face incredulous but hopeful.

“Hey, Arya,” he said, and he would have bet money that his face looked just as surprised as hers did.

One of the strangest weeks of Gendry’s life had just gotten even stranger.


	2. New Rich

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains plenty of backstory. Reviews are greatly appreciated!

When he was fourteen Gendry had been visited at the boy’s home by a man named Ned Stark. Ned Stark, one of the wealthiest men in town, had asked Gendry if he wanted a job. When he’d asked Ned why he came to visit him, why he offered him a job, the man had looked at Gendry with kind, sad eyes and told the boy that he had been a friend of Gendry’s family. Wondering how this man had known his mother, he nevertheless accepted the job, happy to earn a bit of money.

Three days a week he would take the bus from the home to the Stark’s neighborhood. He spent the days doing yardwork and various tasks around the Stark property— cleaning out the rain gutters, fixing a busted fence, repainting a shed— and Ned Stark paid him well for it.

Gendry had quickly befriended Robb and Jon, Ned’s two eldest children who were only a year older than Gendry. When he finished with his work, he, Robb, and Jon would play basketball in the driveway or videogames in the Stark’s basement. He’d been thrilled by the PlayStation, thinking of the boy’s home with the single TV in the rec-room.

On most days the three boys were joined by Arya, Robb and Jon’s youngest sister. She was five years their junior, but only ever wanted to play with her older brothers rather than her older sister, Sansa, who was much closer to her in age. Gendry found that he enjoyed her company as much as he did Robb and Jon’s, and when the brothers weren’t home he’d play basketball or climb trees with her.

After working there for two years, Ned Stark arranged an internship for him at Mott’s Welding, having known that Gendry excelled in his shop class at school. He ceased working for Ned Stark then, spending most of his time at the shop where Tobho Mott, the owner, took Gendry under his wing. It felt more like going to school than to work, with Mott teaching him the trade, as if he knew the orphan boy would never have the opportunity to go to a technical college or trade school. Though he no longer worked for the Starks, he was regularly invited over on the weekends.

When Gendry was eighteen Ned Stark suffered a massive, unexpected stroke and died. He had gone to the funeral, overwhelmed by how many people were there to honor the man and express their condolences and support to his grieving family. He remembered seeing Arya and her sister Sansa, holding hands as Sansa rested her head on her younger sister’s shoulder.

He had never asked Ned Stark how he knew his mother.

After the death of their father Gendry saw the Stark children less and less. At only nineteen Robb was being trained by Ned’s associates to take over the family business, and Jon had announced that he was joining the military. Catelyn Stark, Ned’s widow, devoted herself to keeping the company afloat and looking after her four youngest children.

Gendry had seen Arya once after the funeral. He’d been twenty and on a date at the movies with Jeyne, maybe their second or third. He’d gone out to refill their popcorn when he saw Arya Stark at the concession stand. She’d cut her hair short, up to her ears, and her eyes had seemed to hold a permanent sort of sadness. She’d told him she missed him, missed the days when he came over to play basketball or videogames with her and Robb and Jon. She’d given him a quick hug before they parted, and told him not to be a stranger.

But six months later Arya Stark ran away from home. He’d heard about it online— posts from Robb and Sansa asking everyone in the area to keep an eye out for her and call them with any information. After a few weeks the Starks made it known that Arya had contacted them and was presumed to be safe. The talk around town was that she had run away to be with an older boyfriend, but Gendry had never fully bought that. The lively, resourceful girl he had known for years wouldn’t have done something so short-sighted and stupid, though he admitted that he had no idea why she had run away.

After a few months the police called off their search, and a little over a year after she had first left home she turned up at the Stark house on her own accord. Not a month later she was sent off to an all-girls boarding school. A punishment, Gendry figured, for running away.

And now she was sitting in the passenger seat of Gendry’s car as he drove toward her neighborhood. He had offered her a ride after she told him she had taken the bus to get to the bar. She didn’t have her own car, she explained, and was occasionally able to borrow her mother’s, but had had no such luck that night.

“I’m sure you know of a bar that doesn’t card,” she said to him. Gendry knew of several.

“I’m not taking you to another bar.”

“Why not?” she asked, sounding genuinely surprised, like she was hoping they’d have a night out drinking together.

“You’re underage,” he said simply.

“When did you become Johnny Law?” she said, her tone teasing, and Gendry laughed.

“I’ll be twenty in a few weeks, you know,” she went on, and he laughed harder.

“That’s still underage!”

“Yeah, yeah,” she sighed.

“So,” he began, not sure how to ask even one of the many questions he had for her.

“Are you still in school?” he asked, figuring that was a pretty safe question. He wasn’t about to launch an interrogation.

“No,” she replied. “I graduated from the boarding school this past May.”

“You’ve been home since then?” he asked. He was surprised that he hadn’t heard word of her return in the relatively small town.

“Yeah… you know, you were one of the people I actually wanted to see when I came home, but Sansa said she thought you’d moved away.”

“Nah, I’ve been here.”

“Do you still work at that foster care place? I remember you talking about that when I saw you that time at the movies.”

“I do, yeah. Just one day a week, though. I work for Mott full time.”

“That’s good. Those jobs suit you,” she said. He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that, but she had said it like it was something obvious.

“What about the girlfriend?” she asked.

“What?”

“The girl you were on a date with at the movies.”

“Oh, Jeyne,” he said. Had Arya just asked him if he was seeing anyone? “We dated for a year before we broke up.” He glanced over at her briefly, but it was too dark to read her expression.

“You know,” he said, hoping he wasn’t about to overstep his bounds, “when you left a lot of people said it was because of some secret, older boyfriend.”

She scoffed loudly.

“They always go for the most melodramatic story, don’t they?” she said. He hummed his agreement.

“The man I left town with when I was sixteen was not my boyfriend. It… it wasn’t anything like that.”

“I believe you,” Gendry said, hoping that his tone told her that she didn’t need to discuss it further if she didn’t want to.

Before long the streets of downtown turned into the narrow, side walked roads of Arya’s neighborhood. The houses were old, well-cared for, and impressively large. He remembered walking through the neighborhood to get to the Stark residence, and he found the house easily. He parked in the driveway, and she unfastened her seat-belt before she turned to look at him, her hand on the door handle.

“Thanks, Gendry,” she said, her face serious, as if he had done something far more chivalrous than drive her home.

“Yeah, no problem.”

“We should hang out sometime. You’re probably one of the only decent people left in this town.”

“I’d like that,” he told her.

“Put your number in my phone,” she said, pulling the device from her bag and holding it out to him. He did as she instructed and handed the phone back to her.

“I’ll text you,” she said with a smile. She climbed out of his car, waving to him before she headed to the front door.

Gendry’s thoughts were a swirling mass of questions as he drove back to his apartment. Where had she gone when she was sixteen? Who was the man she left with? Had something happened to her to make her want to come home?

He wondered if she had any intention of telling him about her time away. It wasn’t as if she owed him an explanation. Gendry didn’t know what it was about her that made him so curious all of a sudden.

 _She’s pretty_ , he thought as he lay in bed later that night. _You’re attracted to her_.

Though he wanted to chastise himself for feeling that way about the younger sister of his friends, the fact of it was that he hadn’t seen Jon or Robb in years. And she was nineteen— he wasn’t being some sort of pervert. She was definitely pretty. She was shorter than him by a foot, and thin but shapely, her figure revealed by the pair of tight, high-waist jeans she’d been wearing. Her hair, dark brown and straight, was longer than he’d ever seen it, reaching the middle of her back.

Gendry wondered when she would text him as he fell asleep.

Sunday at the Center was like any other day. They served the kids breakfast and lunch, introduced a new resident to the group— a shy seven-year-old named Matthew— and played kickball during their outdoor time.

At the end of every one of his Sunday shifts, the youngest resident at the Center, a five-year-old girl named Poppy, would cling to his leg and beg Gendry not to leave. That Sunday was no different.

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked as she looked up at him, her bottom lip jutting out so that Gendry had to suppress a laugh.

“You’ll see me next Sunday, Poppy,” he said as he delicately pried her off of his leg and knelt down to be at her eye-level.

“Promise?” she asked, the lip still out. He held out his pinky to her, which she wrapped her own pinky around, a grin lighting up her face. He stood up and ruffled her auburn hair affectionately before she turned and ran back toward the group of kids on the couches in the rec room. Gendry made his way toward the staff room. He poked his head into the office, where a single woman, Willow Heddle, who was Jeyne’s younger sister, sat typing at the computer. Gendry and Willow had always gotten along, and she’d been disappointed when he and Jeyne’s relationship had ended.

“See you next week, Will,” he called. She looked up from the computer screen and smiled.

“Have a good week, Gendry!”

He stopped in the staff room, where he gathered his jacket, wallet, and phone from his locker. When he got to his car he saw that he had three unread text messages, all from the same number.

 _It’s Arya. Thought you should have my number too_ , read the first.

 _Do you work today?_ was the second. And then, sent three hours later:

_I’m going to guess you’re at work. Let me know when you’re free this week!_

He wrote a reply, telling her he was free Friday night and all day Saturday. He was surprised she had texted him so soon, but figured it was because she really did have no one to hang out with.

He let himself think about the funeral for the first time while he was eating dinner that night. He had spent all day focusing on work, on solving disputes between the children and comforting the ones that missed their drug addict parents. But now the thoughts of Robert Baratheon started to creep in. He pictured Mya Stone dressed in black, standing with members of her family as Robert Baratheon’s casket was lowered into the ground. He wondered how many people had been there. He wondered if anyone would have asked him how he knew Robert, had he gone. He imagined telling them, “I’m his bastard son” or maybe, “I’m the kid he wanted nothing to do with.” He pictured the shocked or upset looks on their faces. Gendry also wondered if he would hear from Mya Stone again. She seemed like she would be the type to push for some sort of relationship, to try to connect with him despite the fact that they had only just met, when both of them were in their mid-twenties.

His phone buzzed, snapping him out of his thoughts. It was a reply from Arya, asking him if he wanted to get coffee with her on Saturday.

 _Don’t overanalyze it_ , he thought to himself, his mind snapping to the date-like connotations of two people getting coffee together.

Every day after work for the rest of the week he spent either at the gym or hanging out with Hot Pie and occasionally their friends Lommy and Anguy. He and Hot Pie were drinking beers at the same bar Gendry had run into Jeyne and Arya.

“And _how_ did she find you?” Hot Pie asked, his face scrunched in confusion as Gendry told him the tale of Mya Stone and Robert Baratheon. He was on his fourth beer, and was having no problem recounting the details to his long-time friend.

Hot Pie had been at the boys home with him, though he was a temp while Gendry was a permanent. Temps were troubled boys who had one or both parents, but stayed at the home for periods of time due to behavioral issues or, more commonly, issues their parents had. Hot Pie’s mother had been in prison, and Hot Pie had stayed at the home for four years.

“The internet, where you can find anyone, apparently,” Gendry answered.

“And she just… told you he was dead? Just like that?”

“How was she supposed to have done it? Send me a postcard?” Gendry said sarcastically.

“It’s just all so wild, man! You go your whole life and the guy wants nothing to do with you, and then a month after he decides he wants to meet you he dies? Your life is like a made for TV movie or some shit.”

Gendry laughed at that.

“You’re going to love this part. After I declined Mya’s funeral invitation, she tells me to expect a call from Robert’s lawyer. It would seem that dear old dad decided to leave me a bunch of money.”

Hot Pie’s eyes widened comically.

“How much we talkin’?”

Gendry shrugged.

“Dunno yet. Waiting for the call.”

They spent the rest of the night musing over what they would do with a dead relative’s money.

The call came conveniently timed on Friday during Gendry’s lunch break at the shop. To his astonishment, Robert Baratheon’s lawyer told him that he was getting two hundred thousand dollars, as well as a share of the Baratheon business, which the lawyer assured him would generate far more than two hundred grand over the course of Gendry’s life. When the call ended he sat there dumbly, staring blankly at the phone in his hand, the lawyer’s words ringing in his ears.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

What the fuck was he going to do with two hundred thousand dollars?

Why had Robert Baratheon left so much to the son he wanted nothing to do with? Was that the man’s idea of a fair trade?

 _You’ll grow up without a dad but you’ll get a shitload of money when he dies!_ Gendry thought sardonically. It was all he could think about. The number would appear behind his eyes, lit up and flashing like it was the grand prize on the world’s most morbid game show. It occupied his every thought, and was pretty much the only thing he could think of as he sat opposite Arya, the two of them drinking coffee in a café she frequented when he met her on Saturday morning.

“What’s bothering you?” she asked almost as soon as they sat down at a small wooden table near the large street-facing windows. The sky outside was grey, the air foggy as a light dose of rain drizzled down. The coffee shop was warm, the atmosphere cozy and inviting, and a welcome contrast to the cold, damp weather.

Gendry was taken aback by her question. Either he was shit at hiding his emotions of she was disconcertingly good at reading people.

“Nothing,” he answered, perhaps too quickly. She smirked at him.

“You sure?”

He stared at her for a moment. Her hair was swept up into a loose bun, and she wore a dark grey pullover hoodie that nearly matched the color of her eyes. Gendry heaved a sigh.

“It’s kind of a long story,” he said. She merely shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t have anywhere to be. We’re catching up, right?” she said with an easy smile.

He started by giving her the background that she didn’t already know: how he had always known his father’s name but never his identity, how he had never once met him or been in contact with him. He then told her about Mya Stone, about the phone calls and their meeting and about Robert’s death.

“What an asshole,” Arya said with conviction. “I mean I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but what the fuck? He took this girl in no problem but couldn’t help you when you were _six_?”

Gendry found her reaction refreshing, glad that she hadn’t wasted time on offering trite condolences.

“So here’s where it gets interesting,” he continued, taking a sip of coffee before looking back to her. “For some reason when this asshole wrote his will he decided to include me.”

Arya raised an eyebrow.

“He left me _a lot_ of money,” he said slowly, curious to see how she would react. She sat back in her seat.

“When you say a lot… do you mean, like, ‘go on an extravagant vacation’ money or… ‘quit your job’ money?”

“I’d say it’s somewhere in between. It’s more like… ‘I could now own a Lamborghini’ money.”

She let out a low whistle.

“Well, as someone whose family fits the definition of ‘old money,’ I’d like to welcome you to being rich.”

They both laughed at that.

“In all seriousness, when are you getting it?” she asked.

“The lawyer said it would take a couple of months for everything to be finalized. Then I get this huge check.”

“Do you think it’ll be physically huge as well?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. “Like the kind they give you when you win the lottery or a sweepstakes?”

He couldn’t believe she had him laughing about the whole situation.

“So do you know what you’re going to do with it?” she asked over her mug of coffee.

“I don’t know, I mean, I guess I should just save most of it. I’ve always wanted to travel though,” he said. He’d never really told anyone that but it seemed natural to tell her. “See a bit of the world.”

She smiled at him, her eyes gentle and staring into his.

“I think that’s a great idea. Anything involving getting out of this miserable town for a little while is a great idea.”

“That about catches you up on my life, then,” he said. “What have you been up to?” He hoped she was willing to talk about herself, to at least partially fill in the years he hadn’t seen her.

“I can honestly say that I’ve been doing nothing since I came home from boarding school,” she said. “I wanted to get a job, just to have something to do, but my mom won’t let me.”

“Let you? You’re nineteen.”

“Yeah. That’s what I told her. I think she doesn’t trust me to be out of the house for eight hours at a time. She’s still punishing me for running away when I was sixteen.”

“Can I ask you why you ran away?” he asked carefully, not wanting to irritate her. She took a deep breath, staring out the window for a moment before she looked back at him.

“After my dad died, I started spending time with this girl that used to go to my school. She was a few years older than me. She was sort of into petty crime— shoplifting, vandalism, stupid shit like that,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“She was dating this guy, who was way older than her — like twenty six or twenty seven— who was a drug dealer. She was so detached from everything. The more time I spent with her the more I became like her.” She stared down into her coffee.

“I stopped caring about school, about my friends, even my family. It was like everything felt pointless because my dad was dead and my family was practically falling apart.” She paused, shaking her head, but Gendry said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“So when she asked me to move across the country with her and Jaqen— who had heard from one of his connections that there was a ton of money to be made out there— I thought, ‘fuck it, what’s stopping me?’”

She looked up at him, her expression defensive.

“I know that’s messed up,” she added. He waited to speak, only doing so when he was sure she had nothing more to say.

“I have to say that’s a lot less glamorous than the secret, mysterious boyfriend story,” he said.

Luckily she smiled, albeit weakly.

“So why did you come back?” Gendry asked.

“I was out there for about a year, even more miserable than when I was here. It was awful, as you can imagine living with a drug dealer and his girlfriend and their friends would be. I made a lifetime of mistakes in that one year.”

He didn’t know what she meant by that, but he let her continue.

“One day it was like I just woke up. I realized that I still cared about my life. I realized that I’d put my family through hell,” she said, looking out the window once more, her eyes glassy.

“So I bought a plane ticket one day and I came home,” she finished, meeting his eye again.

Gendry considered everything she had just told him. He still had questions, but they didn’t seem to matter at that moment. Nothing mattered except for the girl sitting across from him, her hands cupped around her mug and her large grey eyes staring at him, waiting for him to speak.

“I’m glad you woke up,” he said softly, finally offering a response.

Arya smiled, soft and a bit sad.

“Me too.”


	3. Reacquainted

Arya Stark seamlessly became a part of Gendry’s life and routine after that Saturday morning at the coffee shop. Initially they only saw each other on weekends; she would ask him to get coffee or food with her, citing her ever-present boredom. He felt that they often did things that couples would do, though he could confidently say that they were not dating. He knew he was attracted to her but wasn’t bothered by their relationship. They made for good friends; she could hold a conversation but wasn’t overly chatty, she was even-tempered and mostly laid back, and she had the same sense of humor as him.

He invited her over to his apartment for the first time on a whim. She’d complained of having to get the oil in her mom’s car changed while they were at a Chinese buffet eating dinner, and he told her he could do it for free. He had her follow him to his apartment complex and park her car in the lot, then ran inside to get what he needed.

Gendry popped the hood of the silver Lexus, getting the oil changed in a matter of minutes. He closed the hood when he was finished, revealing Arya leaning against the car with her arms crossed over her chest.

“I appreciate it, thank you,” she said. He didn’t doubt her gratitude, but she had an odd, scrunched look on her face, like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if she should.

“Why are you making that face?” he asked around a laugh. She was so full of attitude sometimes.

“What face?” she asked indignantly. She was also hilariously stubborn.

“Sort of looks like you just bit into a lemon.”

She rolled her eyes, something he had noted was a habit of hers.

“Shut up,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Well?”

“I thought you were going to invite me up when you got the stuff, but apparently I’ve overestimated our level of closeness. We’ve only known each other, what, ten years?”

“You want to come up?” he asked. The idea of Arya being in his apartment was equal parts exciting and terrifying. He tried to remember how clean his place was. He tried to remember the last time he’d had a girl over. Six months? Seven?

“Yes. I’d like to come up,” she said matter-of-factly. Gendry mentally shook himself. Arya wasn’t coming up to his apartment for the reason the girl from six months ago had.

“C’mon then,” he told her. She followed him into the building and up the stairs to the third floor. When he led her into his apartment she took a quick look around before plopping down on the worn, navy blue couch that took up most of the space in the main room.

“You gonna stay awhile?” he asked, only a tiny hint of sarcasm in his voice. Arya shrugged.

“What’s stopping me? I have no life, remember?”

He sat down next to her, leaning his head against the back of the couch. He looked over at her from the corner of his eye. She was wearing a large denim jacket over a long red sweater and black leggings. She began taking her jacket off, as if she was illustrating her point.

“So your mom is pretty controlling, right?” he asked.

“To an extent. She knows she can’t interfere too much in my life, though. I’ve threatened to move out, and that is the last thing she wants,” she said, turning her head to look at him.

“Who can blame her?” he said, grinning at her, knowing she would think he was being sarcastic. She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Does she know you’ve been spending so much time with me these past two weeks?” Catelyn Stark had been pleasant but always a bit lukewarm toward Gendry when he had worked for the Starks.

“Most of the time I go out while she’s working. She works from home, so she’s always too busy to ask a bunch of questions. When she does ask I just say I’m meeting a friend.”

He nodded.

“Look, it’s not like she’d be angry that I’m seeing you. It’s just that she would almost definitely assume that you’re my boyfriend.”

Gendry’s eyes widened.

“Why is that?”

“Because,” Arya said, looking straight ahead at the wall instead of him, “I had a huge crush on you when we were kids.”

His mouth hung open briefly before his face broke into a grin.

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“No,” she said as she shook her head. “All of my siblings knew. Sansa teased me about it all the time.”

“For how long?”

“From when we first met, when I was ten, until I was like fourteen.”

Gendry laughed. Of course his adolescent self had been too stupid to realize that Arya had a crush on him.

“Shut up!” Arya said as he laughed next to her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but what could you have possibly found attractive about fourteen-year-old Gendry?”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

“You were my older brothers’ friend. You were… different.” She smiled softly.

“Different?”

“Yeah. You were sort of quiet. I probably mistook that for you being mysterious,” she said before they both started laughing. She turned so that she was facing him on the couch. She stared at him for a moment, their laughter fading, before she spoke again.

“You were always a good listener. Any time I got frustrated with my siblings, I felt like I could talk to you.” Her voice was soft, her expression serene, caught up in nostalgic recollections.

He stared back at her, noting the way her long, dark eyelashes made her grey eyes appear even more striking. Her face wasn’t that far from his, and he thought that it would probably be very easy to lean slightly to kiss her. Arya blinked and turned her head.

“You have anything to drink?” she asked, standing up.

“You want a beer?” he asked. He stood up and moved toward the kitchen, hoping his head would clear of thoughts of kissing her.

“A beer? I thought that I, an underage nineteen-year-old, shouldn’t be drinking.”

“No, see, nineteen-year-olds shouldn’t be at bars. But here? You can drink here any time you like,” Gendry said. Arya smirked at him before moving toward the fridge. She pulled out two beers and used the counter to pop the caps off. She handed one to him as they both sat back down on the couch. He turned the TV on, flipping through channels as he sipped his beer. They sat together for a while, sipping beer and watching some ridiculous reality show. After a while Arya turned toward him once more.

“Hey, I know it’s not really my place, but… if you ever… if you want to talk,” she said, stumbling over her words. Gendry looked at her pointedly. She took a deep breath.

“Look, I… I know what it’s like to lose a parent. And I know that our situations are totally different. But if you want to talk about it I’ll listen.”

Gendry raised his eyebrows at her. He hadn’t expected that. He had been getting pretty good at ignoring thoughts about Robert Baratheon, only ever being reminded when he thought about the money. Arya was looking at him earnestly, not with pity but with understanding and resolve. He nodded at her.

“Thanks,” he said. She turned back to the TV.

“Have you talked to Mya lately?” she asked casually.

“What?”

“Mya,” she said, “Mya Stone.”

“No, not exactly,” he said, not understanding why she was asking about Mya.

“You’re not planning on keeping in touch with her?”

“I really haven’t given it much thought,” he said, knowing it was true.

“Gendry, she’s your sister,” Arya said, and her voice had a tone of seriousness to it that he never heard from her.

“She’s my half-sister,” he corrected. “And I barely know her.”

“So?” Arya said, rounding on him so that she was at his shoulder. “She’s your family whether or not she’s a stranger. You can’t change that.”

Gendry supposed she was right but wasn’t sure why she was pushing it.

“Just call or text her sometime,” Arya suggested. “I don’t think you’ll regret developing a relationship with your sister.”

When Arya left later that night he walked her down to the parking lot. She opened her car door but hesitated, chewing on her lip and staring up at him.

“I’m really glad we ran into each other at the bar that night,” she said.

“You mean you’re really glad you got kicked out and I followed you outside,” Gendry corrected, smirking at her. She rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, exactly,” she said. She threw her arms around his middle then, resting her head on his chest as she hugged him. His arms went around her automatically, brushing against her hair. She pulled back sooner than he would have liked.

“Thanks again for the oil change,” she said with a smile. “See you later.”

“See you, Arya,” he said. He headed back to his building as she pulled out and drove off.

Gendry took Arya’s advice. He called Mya Stone on a Sunday, after he got done working at the center. As soon as he hit the call button and lifted his phone to his ear he realized he didn’t have a plan for what to say to her.

“Hello?” came her voice, pleasant but sounding slightly surprised.

“Hey Mya, it’s Gendry,” he said unnecessarily.

“Hi, Gendry, how are you?” she asked.

“I’m doing alright,” he said. “And you?”

They made standard small talk for a minute before Gendry asked the question that he hadn’t even realized had been on his mind.

“How did Robert die?”

“Oh,” she said. “I never told you, did I? He had stomach cancer. It was in the final stages by the time he was diagnosed.”

“He knew he didn’t have long to live, then?”

“Yeah. When he found out they gave him two months.”

“Is that when he asked you to find me?” Gendry asked, feeling like he already knew the answer.

“It was shortly after he was diagnosed, yes.”

Gendry didn’t say much after that, the conversation fizzling out. He thought about the first time Mya had called him. He thought about how he told her to go to hell. Robert had known, then. He had known that he was dying and had reached out to the son he’d ignored his entire life. And Gendry had ignored him. Guilt and shame washed over him, thoughts of a dying, sickly man permeating his every thought.

But the more he thought about it the more his sadness and shame turned to anger. The only reason Robert Baratheon had found him was because he had a death sentence hanging over his head. His cancer had compelled him to do something he should have done over twenty years ago. And what had the man done to assuage his guilt when Gendry didn’t want to be reached? He’d written Gendry into his will, giving him a lump of money and a share of his business to make up for time lost.

***

When he wasn’t thinking about the newly discovered information on Robert Baratheon Gendry was thinking about Arya. He recalled their childhood memories together with a new fondness, trying to remember any indication that she had had a crush on him. She had always been such a whirlwind— full of energy, always running around, often getting into trouble— that he had never really noticed that her behavior was any different around him.

Work at Mott’s was slow that week, with Gendry doing the invoice paperwork that Tobho usually took care of while the older man was away on a short vacation. Being holed up in a quiet office allowed him time to think about why Arya had told him about her crush. It was more than likely that she had told him because it was funny, an aspect of their childhood that they could look back on and laugh about. But still he clung to the idea that it could be an indication of something more.

When he left Mott’s on Wednesday he found Arya leaning against his car in the parking lot. She waved when she saw him walking her way.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I was running an errand in the area and remembered that you work here,” she said. “And that you get off around five,” she added with a glance at her phone to check the time.

“So you’re stalking me now?” he asked, crossing his arms and smiling down at her.

She rolled her eyes, something he remembered her doing a lot when they were kids. He liked it, the way her eyes would roll while the corners of her mouth lifted just a bit.

“The sun is going to set in an hour, but this is probably one of the last nice days we’ll have before it gets really cold. Do you want to go to the park by Reed’s Lake?” she asked, looking like she half expected him to say no. He never turned down an opportunity to spend time with her.

They climbed in his car, as she had taken the bus to get to that side of town, and he drove them to the public park that bordered the small, man-made Reed’s Lake. It was a popular destination for teenagers— Gendry remembered getting drunk and smoking with his friends on the sandy shores when he’d been in high school— but the little park with its picnic table and rusted swing-set was devoid of people as Gendry parked his car.

He and Arya sat on a bench in the grass that surrounded the sand, a mild, cool wind ruffling their hair as the autumn sun warmed their skin. They talked about their usual things— his jobs, her frustration with her family, the money he would soon be getting.

“Want to know something fucked up?” he asked when the conversation hit a lull. She turned to look at him, her eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Robert had late stage stomach cancer. He only sought me out because he knew he was dying. That’s why he put me in his will.”

He continued to stare out at the lake, watching the wind blow ripples in the water, creating small waves that lapped against the shore. He felt her eyes on him, and when he glanced at her they were wide and sad. She didn’t say anything further. Instead she put her hand in his, clasping it gently. He wanted so badly to kiss her, but how could he after he’d just made her sad by talking about his dead father? So he settled for squeezing her hand, a sad smile tugging at her lips.

They stayed that way for a little while, hand in hand as they stared at the lake until the sun went down.

As he was driving her home she mentioned that Friday was her birthday. When he told her he’d take her to a bar that didn’t card her face lit up immediately.

“I’ll tell the guys to come, we’ll have a proper celebration,” he said, thinking that Hot Pie and Lommy and Anguy would be more than happy to have a reason to drink and celebrate something.

“That would be great,” she said excitedly. Gendry knew that she had few, if any, friends in town.

Later that night he texted Hot Pie, Lommy, Anguy, and Willow, thinking that she and Arya would get along well.

On Friday night he picked Arya up from her house. He had told her to get as wasted as she wanted; he was only going to have a few beers and would get her home at the end of the night. When she walked out to his car he noticed what she was wearing— a simple burgundy dress over sheer black tights, with a black leather jacket he’d seen her wear before. He thought she looked ridiculously attractive. Her hair was down, a pair of small, silver hoop earrings in her ears.

“You look nice,” he told her.

“Thanks,” she said with a grin as she tugged her seatbelt on. “I could say the same for you.”

He glanced down at his dark jeans and black, long sleeved t shirt, feeling rather underdressed.

He told her about his friends as they drove to the bar, mentioning that Willow Heddle, Jeyne's younger sister, would be there as well.

Willow and Lommy were seated at the bar when they got there, and Gendry made quick work of introducing them to Arya. The bar was small, dimly-lit, and fairly crowded for a Friday night. The floor was sticky and the beer was cheap. It was a dive, really, but no one ever asked for ID. Gendry could remember being as young as sixteen and having no problem being served.

He ordered Arya a beer, telling her that he was paying for her drinks. She had warmed to Willow quickly, the two chatting amiably when Hot Pie and Anguy arrived. The six of them sat down at a table, Gendry introducing Arya to Hot Pie and Anguy. Hot Pie shook her hand, saying, “so you’re the girl Gendry won’t shut up about.” Gendry could have kicked him under the table, but he refrained, not wanting to hit Willow by mistake. He shot Hot Pie a look, but he heard Arya laugh, and when he looked at her there was a slight blush on her cheeks.

“Don’t mind Hot Pie, he’s a bit of an idiot,” Gendry said to her. She turned toward him so that no one else at the table could hear her.

“I don’t mind at all,” she said with a smile.

Again Gendry was overcome with the urge to kiss her, but could hardly do so at a dive bar, surrounded by a table full of his friends.

“You need another drink,” he said, nodding at her empty glass. He went to the bar to get her another, getting a beer for himself as well. When he came back to the table Anguy was telling Arya one of his stories that Gendry had heard so many times he could practically recite it word for word. This story in particular involved an ex-girlfriend, a potted cactus, and a stray dog, and had Arya and Willow howling with laughter.

As the night progressed Arya got steadily more and more drunk, regaling the table with tales of her and Gendry as children. After Lommy ordered a second round of shots for the table, from which Gendry refrained, he looked over at Arya, slumped in her seat, her cheeks rosy and her eyes half open, and decided it was a good time to take her home. The bar would be closing in less than an hour, anyway.

She leaned heavily on Gendry as she stood up, waving an enthusiastic goodbye to her new friends as Gendry walked her to the door. He got her in his car with a bit of a struggle, sitting her down and fastening her seatbelt. When he got to the driver’s side she was slumped in her seat, her boots against the glove box. He swatted at her feet until she put them down, and she laughed loudly. He laughed with her, always enjoying seeing someone drunk for the first time.

She fiddled with his radio for the duration of the car ride, occasionally finding a song she liked and belting out the words. With there being so few cars on the road they made it to her house in fifteen minutes. When he parked his car in her driveway she turned to look at him, a dreamy smile plastered across her face.

“Gendry,” she said, slurring his name only a little.

“Arya,” he replied.

She laughed again, this time a soft giggle. He got out of the car and walked to the passenger’s side, opening her door and leaning over her to unbuckle her seat belt. She giggled louder as he did so, as if he was tickling her. He pulled her out of the car, standing her up and wrapping his arm around her waist to support her. In truth it would have been easiest for him to just pick her up and carry her, but he doubted Arya would comply.

“Way… wait,” she said. “Gendry… wait!” Her feet stopped moving, causing her to nearly topple over. He stopped with her on the walkway that led to her front door. She grasped his shoulders in her hands, staring up at him with a serious expression.

“Gen… Gendry,” she said. “I… I want to…”

He had to suppress a laugh. He was going to have fun telling her how drunk she got in the morning. She pulled him down toward her unexpectedly, tugging on his shoulders until his face was inches from hers. He could have sworn she was about to kiss him, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as she gazed up at him. Why now, of all times, did she have to realize that she wanted to kiss him? He grasped her arms, pulling them off of him so that he could take a step back.

“You are so drunk,” he said to her, tugging her arm and leading her to the door. She slumped against the door, her eyes closing like she planned to sleep there.

“I don’t knowwww where my keeeeys are,” she slurred.

“What?”

It was nearly two in the morning, and he didn’t have a plan for lost keys.

“Did you leave them at the bar?” he asked her. She shrugged her shoulders.

Gendry began turning over stones that were part of the landscaping, hoping to find a spare key hidden there. Arya, more impatient than he, hit the button for the doorbell and began pounding on the door.

“Arya!”

He grabbed her, pulling her away from the door. She struggled in his grasp, ringing the doorbell once more. Before he had time to even think of what to do the door, to his horror, opened, revealing a very tired and confused looking Catelyn Stark.

“Mom!” Arya shouted, throwing her arms in the air and wrapping them around her mother’s neck in a crushing hug.

“Arya Stark, are you drunk?” Catelyn demanded, pulling her daughter off of her as she looked from Arya to Gendry. Her expression was equal parts anger and bewilderment.

“Gendry? Gendry Waters?” she asked him.

He nodded dumbly.

“Hi, Mrs. Stark. I, um, I drove Arya home.”

“Was, wasn’t that nice of him, mom?” Arya said as she leaned against her mother.

“Yes, thank you, Gendry,” Catelyn said slowly, narrowing her eyes at him, “for bringing my twenty-year-old daughter home at two in the morning in a drunken stupor.”

Before Gendry could say another word Catelyn ushered Arya inside, shutting the front door in Gendry’s face.

It probably wasn’t the best way to become reacquainted with Catelyn Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the wait was a bit longer for this one! These chapters take me a while to write and edit. Did you think they were going to kiss? Did you not see the slow burn tag? Reviews are treasures.  
> -K


	4. Introductions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry there was such a long wait for this chapter! I would love to update weekly but of course life gets in the way sometimes. For all of you following this story, first of all, thank you, and second-- don't worry about me abandoning this story. I have the entire thing outlined so I know what I want to write, and it will definitely be finished. It just takes a while to write and edit these chapters.  
> All that being said, enjoy!

_Did I dream that encounter with my mother or did that actually happen?_

Gendry read the text from Arya and smiled despite himself. It was Saturday afternoon, and Arya was likely just waking up. Gendry was on his lunch break at Mott’s, sitting in the break room and eating a turkey sandwich as he looked at his phone.

 _That really happened. Don’t blame me either, you rang the doorbell,_ he sent in response.

_I can’t wait for her line of questioning when I leave my room. On a side note, I feel like I’ve been hit by a train._

He chuckled to himself, texting her a few hangover remedies before getting back to work.

Catelyn Stark must have been mad, because Gendry didn’t see Arya for a week after the incident on the Stark’s front porch. He expected that much. She texted him regularly, telling him she would be able to hang out as soon as she “diffused” the situation with her mother. He didn’t know what that meant, but Gendry had never fully understood the relationship between people and their parents.

When he left work at the Center on Sunday, Willow pulled him aside before he left the staff room.

“By the next time you come in to work there’ll be a new kid. His name is Landon, he’s seven, and he’s been… pretty seriously neglected,” she explained. She held out a photo, a school picture by the looks of it, of a little boy who looked to be no older than four or five.

“I just wanted to give you a head’s up,” Willow explained. Gendry nodded. Kids with a history of abuse or neglect always had the hardest time acclimating.

“His parents?” Gendry asked.

“We have no record of who his father is, and his mother is currently in in-patient rehab for the third time. Amphetamines.”

Gendry looked down at the boy in the photo. He wasn’t smiling, just staring blankly ahead.

“Thanks for the notice, Will.” He turned to leave but she spoke again.

“I swear I’m not trying to keep you at work all night,” she laughed. “I’m just wondering, is Arya seeing anyone?”

“Why, are you interested?” Gendry asked jokingly. Willow laughed.

“I have a friend who has been in a rut since his girlfriend dumped him, and I’m thinking of setting him up with Arya, if she’s down for it.”

Gendry chewed his lip.

“I mean, she’s single, yeah. I’m just not sure she’s the type that would want to be set up, you know?” he said.

“Right,” Willow said. “I’ll just ask her when I see her. We’re hanging out on Tuesday, I think.”

“Ah,” Gendry said lamely, looking for a way out.

“Wait, Gendry, you’re not interested in her, are you?” Willow asked. She was standing in front of the door, blocking his only way out.

“Uh…” Gendry hesitated, not knowing whether or not to tell Willow that he was in fact interested in Arya.

“You totally are!” she shouted excitedly. “Why on earth haven’t you made a move? It’s so obvious the two of you like each other, it’s all we could talk about when you guys left the bar! I just assumed you weren’t into her because you haven’t asked her out yet.”

“Willow I appreciate your enthusiasm,” Gendry said, pushing past his friend as he headed for the door. A small smile graced his lips. “And your advice.”

“You better make a move soon, Waters!” Willow called after him as he walked out.

Gendry saw Arya again when she came over to his apartment later that week. She practically flew into his arms, wrapping her arms around his neck when he opened his door to her. He hugged her back tightly, unable to ignore the way her body was pressed against his. When he released her she kept her hands at the back of his neck, so he left his hands at the small of her back.

“I missed you,” she said earnestly. She was smiling at him in a way that made him want to take her to his bedroom.

“I missed you too,” he said, relieved to find that there was nothing awkward about their embrace. He thought about what Willow had said on Sunday. He thought about the way Arya had lunged at him when she was drunk. If she was any other girl he would just kiss her, but something about her made him nervous, like kissing her could fuck things up.

The smile slowly slid from her face as she stared up at him. He was about to let go of her, but the fingers of her hand traveled upward until they were in his hair. She must have been standing on her tip toes, he thought idly before he was lowering his head, his eyes never leaving hers as she stared up at him. She closed her eyes just before his lips met hers. He kissed her softly, his arms wrapping firmly around her and pulling her to him. Her lips moved against his easily, and in that moment all he could focus on was that he wanted more of her. He wanted to peel off the jacket she was wearing, wanted to slip his hands under her shirt and feel her bare skin. Her body was soft against his, filling his head with thoughts of picking her up and taking her to his bed. Before he could actualize those thoughts she was pulling away, her eyes opening and looking up at him.

“I want to keep kissing you,” she said, her voice breathy.

“Then keep kissing me.”

Arya shut her eyes, pausing before she continued talking.

“There are things that we should talk about,” she said, moving over to sit on the couch. He followed her and waited for her to say more.

“I’m not the type of person who should be in a relationship.”

Gendry thought that was a bit preemptive, but still he waited for her to continue.

“I…” she sighed loudly. “I care about you,” she said as she looked down at her hands.

“I care about you, too,” he said to her.

“It’s just… I have a lot of issues with trust, after living with those people, the people I ran away with.”

Gendry furrowed his brow.

“There were always people at the house, usually people who bought from Jaqen. One of them was this guy who would constantly hit on me, and I would constantly tell him to fuck off. One night when we were having a party, he came into my room while I was sleeping. I woke up and he… he was on top of me.”

Arya was picking at her nails now, her voice wavering.

“Nothing happened, so I know it’s dumb, for me to bring this up—”

“It’s not dumb,” he said firmly. She looked over at him, her eyes finally meeting his. They softened when she saw his expression.

“Anyways, I practically threw him out of my room before he could do anything. It just… stuck with me.”

“Do you trust me?” Gendry asked her. She nodded.

“Yes. I do. And I like you. I— I want to be with you.” The look she gave him then was so earnest it made him want to kiss her again.

“It’s just, I haven’t been in any sort of relationship since I was in high school, and that wasn’t exactly serious.”

“We don’t have to be in a relationship if that’s not what you want right now,” he told her.

“All I want is to keep hanging out with you like normal,” she said, before quickly adding, “And the kissing. The kissing is good.”

He laughed at her.

“We can do that,” he said.

“I just want to take things slow,” she said hesitantly, like she didn’t know whether or not she was going to scare him off.

“I can do that.”

She smiled at him.

The vast majority of the time they spent together and the things they did remained unchanged. He supposed she was something like his girlfriend, though it still felt strange to call her that. They went to hole-in-the-wall restaurants and bars that didn’t card and had movie marathons at his place. She took him ice skating and had fun laughing at him as he struggled to even stand on the ice. He took her to a tattoo parlor when she decided on a whim that she wanted to get her nose pierced.

“Next you’ll want a tattoo,” he said as he drove them back to his place. Arya was staring at her reflection in the visor mirror, examining the small stud in her left nostril.

“I’ve never really liked tattoos.”

Gendry had to suppress a nervous laugh.

“Ah,” he said curtly. She whipped her head around to look at him.

“Wait, you have tattoos?” she asked. “I didn’t mean… I’ve never seen them!”

He laughed at how defensive she sounded.

“It hasn’t exactly been warm enough to be walking around shirtless.”

“Which I’m sure you do all the time in the summer,” she said sarcastically.

“Absolutely,” he joked.

“You’re showing me as soon as we get to your place.”

As soon as they got through the apartment door Arya was urging him to take off his shirt. He stripped off his jacket but hesitated to pull the hem of his shirt over his head.

“You can’t laugh,” he told her.

“Where’s the fun in that?” she said. He rolled his eyes at her.

“I’m kidding! Just show me!”

He pulled his t shirt off and felt oddly vulnerable as her eyes scanned his torso. He turned slightly to the side, revealing the simple black line tattoo of a bull he’d gotten on his left shoulder when he was seventeen.

“I got it when I was really young. And still pretty stupid.”

Arya reached up to trace the lines with her fingers.

“Why a bull?” she asked. He chuckled.

“I guess I thought it looked cool. Growing up everyone always told me how stubborn I was.”

“Stubborn as a bull,” she said around a laugh. “It’s really not as bad as you’re making it seem.”

“I’m glad you feel that way. This is the only one I’m not that fond of.”

He turned around to show her the rose that decorated his left shoulder blade.

“Hmm,” she commented. “So to balance out the super masculine bull, you went and got in touch with your feminine side with a flower?”

“Something like that. It’s sort of for my mom.”

“I like it,” she said before reaching out to run her fingers along the stem. “It has thorns,” she added. He hand stopped moving and was resting against his back.

“When I was really little, like four years old, I snuck into the neighbors’ yard and picked a rose from their garden for my mom. I didn’t know that roses had thorns, so when I brought it to her my hand was bleeding and I was crying my eyes out,” he said, beginning to laugh. She joined in.

“I just remember my mom shaking her head at me and laughing. It’s one of the only real memories I have of her.”

They were both silent for a moment, Arya’s hand still on his back, her fingers cool against his warm skin.

“Well, that’s one of the sweetest tattoo stories I’ve ever heard. Do you have any others?” she asked.

Gendry turned to face her, a half smile tilting his lips as he looked down at her, her jacket and jeans contrasting his half-nudity.

“One more. On my leg.”

She merely smirked up at him.

“I guess you’ll have to take your pants off, then.”

He let out a short bark of laughter at her unpredictability. He hadn’t imagined that the first time he’d be undressing in front of Arya would be to show her his tattoos. He also didn’t imagine her to be fully-clothed in such a scenario.

He unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them down his legs before stepping out of them as he faced her. She looked him up and down, her eyes combing over his black boxer briefs before resting on his thigh, where there was a small compass tattooed just above his knee.

“A compass?”

“Something about finding your way… making your own path,” he offered. He was much more interested in the way her eyes kept roaming over his body. He took a step closer to her and reached a hand out, tilting her chin until she was looking up at him.

“Have I ever told you how attracted I am to you?” he asked her. Her cheeks colored but she didn’t look away. She reached her hands out until they rested against his sides. She leaned closer, standing on her toes so that her mouth was closer to his. He brought his lips the rest of the way down to her.

The first few times they had kissed had been sweet, and Gendry had held back. But Arya was making it clear with her lips and tongue that she wanted his full participation. He pushed his tongue into her mouth easily as her hands moved to his back, pulling him against her. He pushed her jacket off her shoulders. He pushed his hands under her sweater, touching the bare skin of her sides.

When he moved his mouth down to her neck she made a soft, sighing sort of sound.

“Can we go to your room?” she asked, her voice as soft and breathy as the sighing sound. He pulled his lips away from her neck so that he could look at her and nod. In a few short steps they were in his bedroom. Arya lifted her sweater over her head, tossing it to his floor and causing his heart to race in his chest. He kissed her, his hands touching newly exposed skin. She was wearing a simple bra that was light blue in color. He took a moment to look at her, pulling away slightly, when she began unbuttoning her jeans. He raised his eyebrows, not expecting that from her.

“It’s only fair if we’re in the same state of undress,” she said with a coy smile.

She stepped toward him. Gendry felt himself growing hard as she put her hands flat against his chest, moving upward until they were around his neck and her body was pressed against his. His hands went to her hips, his fingers skimming along the waistband of pink and white striped cotton before sinking into the soft give of her skin. He guided them to his bed, where she lay back against the comforter as he positioned himself on top of her. It would have been easy for him to lose himself in her, to let his hands and lips run free over her body, to get them both completely naked and do what he desperately wanted to do with her. He tried to move slowly, kissing her neck and chest and keeping his hands at her waist or hips. The sounds coming from her mouth were making his task monumental. When he brought his hand up to cup her breast she said his name. Her hair was messy, her cheeks flushed, and she had said his name while he touched her. But when he brought his lips to hers she pulled back slightly.

“What is it?” he asked.

She chewed her lip, a habit of hers that only further aroused him in the current context.

“I know I’m being, like, the queen of mixed signals right now, but, um, could we stop?”

He moved away from her, rolling off of her to give her space. His body was practically screaming at him.

“I know I basically just asked you to get naked and then stripped for you,” she said, and he couldn’t help but laugh, “but I did mean it when I said I want to take things slow.” She was staring up at the ceiling.

“Hey,” he said, touching her cheek and guiding her eyes back to him. “That’s fine,” he said resolutely. He willed himself to calm down. Arya took a deep breath.

"Thanks."

"You don't have to thank me," he said as he stared into her grey eyes.

“On a separate note, there’s something I have to ask you,” she said, sounding serious. Gendry raised his eyebrows.

“Will you come to dinner this Sunday?”

“At your house?” he asked tentatively.

“Yes. It was my mom’s idea. She wants to, uh, catch up with you.”

“Really?” he asked. He was honestly surprised that Catelyn Stark would still let Arya see him, let alone invite him over to dinner.

“Yes. But Jon will be there!” she added quickly. “So you’ll get to catch up with him and hopefully it won’t be too awkward. And Sansa will be there, too,” she said, trying to sound reassuring.

Gendry could tell by her tone of voice that it was something she was worrying over, and was therefore something important to her.

“I’ll go,” he agreed. She seemed to sigh in relief.

“Does your family know that we’re…uh…” he stammered, not sure of which words to use. “More than friends?” he said.

She nodded slowly.

“I’ve never called you my boyfriend, but they seem to get it,” she said as she rolled to her side to face him. “They all remember how much I liked you when I was younger.”

She smiled up at him, and he had to fight the urge to touch her.

“Maybe we should get dressed now,” he suggested, his tone light.

She laughed, and then got off the bed to retrieve her clothes.

***

Gendry didn’t feel all that nervous about meeting Arya’s family. He had met them years ago; if anything he was merely being reintroduced to them.

When Sunday night came around he found himself standing on the front steps of the Stark residence, ringing the doorbell and waiting in the cold for someone to come to the door. The door opened to reveal Sansa Stark.

“Gendry,” she said pleasantly in greeting. She opened the door for him and offered to take his coat.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” she said. Her long auburn hair was pulled into a loose bun at the back of her head. She led him through the entryway and into the dining room, where six places were set.

“Arya, Gendry’s here,” Sansa called through an open doorway that led to the kitchen. Arya appeared in the dining room moments later, carrying a large serving bowl of salad that she set on the table as she said hi to him. She wore a nervous smile. Taking him by the hand she pulled him into the kitchen where Catelyn, Jon, and Rickon Stark all stood.

“Gendry! It’s been years, man!” exclaimed Jon as he pulled Gendry into a hug. Gendry returned it whole-heartedly, excited to see an old friend. Jon’s hair was longer, pulled back from his face, and a light stubble adorned his chin and cheeks.

“It’s good to see you,” Gendry said.

“You remember Rickon?” Arya asked from his side, nodding to her youngest brother. Rickon Stark had been eleven the last time Gendry had seen him, but was now nearly sixteen and about a foot taller. He waved to Gendry from his position near the oven, where he was checking on the food inside.

“It’s nice to see you again, Gendry,” Catelyn Stark said from where she stood at the sink, drying her hands on a towel.

“It’s nice to see you too,” Gendry said. “Thank you for having me.”

“All of you go and sit down,” Catelyn said to her children and Gendry. “I’ll take the chicken out of the oven.”

The dinner Catelyn had prepared was simple yet delicious, and Gendry relished the taste of a home-cooked meal. He was sat between Arya and Jon, with Rickon, Catelyn, and Sansa sitting on the opposite side of the table. Throughout the meal the conversation had flowed easily, with all of them essentially catching up with Gendry. When they had all nearly finished with their food, Catelyn turned to look at Gendry.

“So, Gendry, what is it that you do?”

Was this going to be the “you’re-sort-of-dating-my-daughter” interrogation?

“I work at Mott’s Welding. And also a foster care center,” he answered.

“Mott’s? Is that the place Ned got you that internship?” she asked.

“It is.”

“You’ve been there for a while, then?”

Gendry nodded. “It’s good work. I’m a floor lead there, meaning I manage the other welders and deal with clients.”

Catelyn nodded slowly. “Do you plan on ever furthering your education?”

Arya sighed loudly, stabbing at her chicken with her fork.

“College was never really an option for me. And, if I’m being honest I don’t think it’s the best option for everyone. I’m at the point in my career where I feel comfortable with having not gone to school.”

Catelyn narrowed her eyes slightly, looking like she was about to offer a rebuttal, when Sansa spoke.

“Well I think it’s admirable that you’ve been there for so long. It’s clearly paid off for you,” she said with a kind smile. Gendry was surprised. Sansa had never exactly been friendly toward him as a child.

“Yeah,” added Arya. “And he’s right, you know, college isn’t the best option for everyone, Mom.”

Catelyn raised her eyebrows at her youngest daughter.

“Hey, I didn’t go to college, either,” said Jon, referring to his military career. Before Gendry could say anything further Sansa had asked if he would like to help her with the dishes. He readily agreed.

“Sorry if that was weird,” Sansa said in a hushed tone as she and Gendry stood in the kitchen. “I think that’s her only hang-up about you, though.”

“I guess that’s not so bad, then,” Gendry said as he loaded the silverware into the dishwasher.

“She knows how happy you make Arya,” Sansa told him, and Gendry couldn’t help but smile. “It’s just that I know she really wants Arya to go to college, and I think she has this fear that if Arya spends too much time with you she’ll somehow be convinced not to go.”

Gendry hadn’t realized that Arya was ever planning to go to college. She had never mentioned it to him, but he made a mental note to ask her about it later.

“It’s just with everything that happened… we all obviously want Arya to stay on track,” Sansa said.

“Of course,” Gendry said. “With the… running away and everything.”

Sansa nodded.

“And the rehab,” she added, her voice dropping even lower. The sound of conversation drifted in from the dining room, indicating that their conversation couldn’t be overheard by the other Starks.

“Hm?” Gendry said, not understanding what Sansa meant. “What, like therapy?”

Why hadn’t Arya mentioned that? It would make sense, given the little information she had told him about her time away from home.

“The drug rehabilitation program she went through when she came back,” Sansa clarified. “Where my mom sent her.”

Now he was really confused.

“I thought she was sent to boarding school,” he said slowly.

“I mean it _was_ also a school, but it was mainly a rehabilitation center for young girls…” Sansa looked at him pointedly. “Did she— did she not tell you that?”

“No,” Gendry said, feeling his heart quicken with anger.

“Oh, shit,” Sansa swore, suddenly looking appalled. “I— I’m sorry, I should not have told you that.”

“It’s fine,” he said mechanically. He walked back into the dining room.

“Thank you again for having me,” he said to Catelyn, hoping he sounded normal. “It was really great seeing you all,” he said to Rickon and Jon.

“You’re leaving?” asked Arya. He didn’t look at her.

“My boss at the foster care center just texted me— she wants me to work a night shift tonight. Someone called in sick. I really should be heading out.”

The Starks said their goodbyes, and Arya walked him to the front door. He quickly tugged on his coat.

“I’ll see you later, then? I was thinking we could see that movie sometime this week—” she began, but he cut across her.

“Yeah. Sure.” He said, not knowing what to say to her. He didn’t know how she could have kept this from him. He didn’t know how to even talk to her about it. He just knew he couldn’t stay in the house a moment longer. He said a quick goodbye and walked through the door. She looked taken aback, probably because he hadn’t kissed her. He walked to his car, vaguely aware that it had started to snow. Just as he was putting his key in the car door he saw her jogging toward him.

“Gendry! Hold on!” Arya called. When she reached him she put her hand on his arm. “Is everything all right? I know you have to go to the center but you left really quick back there.”

He turned toward her. She had run out with out a coat, and was crossing her arms over her chest to try to keep warm.

“If we can’t be honest with each other, then this isn’t going to work,” he bit out.

“What—”

“I never asked you for details. I never pried. I never made you tell me anything you didn’t want to tell me about when you ran away,” he said, growing angrier with each word. “But you lied to me,” he said.

Arya’s face was muddled with hurt and confusion.

“Gendry what are you—”

“You didn’t go to a boarding school,” he said roughly. “You went to rehab.”

Arya’s face fell.

“You— you were addicted to… _whatever_ , and you went to rehab, and you didn’t fucking tell me about that.”

“I was going to tell you,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper as tears coated her eyes.

“Your sister just did,” he said. “I thought this meant something to you, whatever this is. You told me that you trust me.”

“It does!” she said much louder. "I do!"

“Then why would you lie to me?” he said, shouting now.

“Why are you entitled to know that about me?” she said, sounding like she, too, was getting mad. “It’s my own damn business! My sister had no right to tell you, and you have no right to be mad at me!”

“That’s a pretty big thing to keep from someone you supposedly care about!”

“There are things I can’t talk to you about! Just like there are things that I know you can’t talk to me about,” she said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Everything with Robert! This huge thing happened to you and you never even talk about it!”

If he hadn’t been angry before he was definitely furious now.

“That has nothing to do with what we’re talking about,” he said, his voice low. “And you know that.”

He opened the car door and got in, slamming it shut. He turned on the car as Arya tugged on the locked door handle.

“Gendry, wait,” she yelled through the glass. He didn’t want to look at her. It sounded like she was crying. He put the car in reverse, forcing her to back away. He pulled out of the driveway and drove off, only looking at her once in the rearview mirror as he did.


	5. Money and Other Awards

Two days after the disastrous dinner with the Starks, and after two days’ worth of unanswered texts and calls, a knock sounded on Gendry’s door.

“How did you get in?” he said gruffly, not looking her in the eye.

“Someone was coming in through the front door when I got here. They held it open for me,” Arya explained.

“What do you want?”

His anger with her hadn’t exactly cooled, but she held her resolve.

“To talk to you,” she said.

“Are you going to keep lying to me?”

She actually rolled her eyes at him then.

“I get that you’re angry, alright? Would you just let me in?”

He stared at her for a moment, knowing that they were both far too stubborn for any kind of stand-off to work. He opened the door to let her in.

“It was pills,” she said after a beat. She ran a hand through her hair and turned toward him.

“That’s what I got addicted to,” she went on. “It started with taking things to help me sleep. Sometimes things to keep me awake. Then pain pills. It put me in this fog where I didn’t have to think about my dad’s death.”

She shook her head, tears forming in her eyes.

“I tried to stop before I came home. I didn’t fully realize how bad it was until I told my mom what was going on.”

She was staring down at the floor. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles.

“Everything about rehab was awful. I was ashamed of myself, but I got clean. And I haven’t touched anything since.”

Gendry breathed deeply, his anger slowly abiding, before he spoke.

“When I first ran into you that night at the bar, you were out by yourself. Like you were going out to drink alone.” Arya shook her head, understanding what he was trying to ask her.

“I would go out alone to get out of the house, to clear my mind. I don’t have a problem with alcohol. You know that— you saw me drinking wine in front of my family at dinner.”

That was true.

“I know that I should have told you sooner. It’s just not exactly the easiest thing to tell someone. But I was going to tell you, Gendry, you have to believe that.” Her voice broke, and he reached out to envelop her in his arms.

“Hey,” he said amidst the sound of her sniffling. “It’s alright.”

He felt like an asshole for all but forcing her to tell him.

“I’m sorry,” he said against her hair. “I’m sorry, Arya.”

“It’s alright,” she said, her voice muffled against his shirt. “It feels good to be able to talk to you about this, to be open with you.”

She stood on her tip toes to kiss him softly. When she pulled back Gendry glanced at the time displayed in bright green numbers on the microwave.

“Shit,” he swore, “I’m late.”

“Work?” she asked.

“No, I’m meeting with the lawyer today,” he explained.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked, grasping his hand. He looked down at her fondly.

“I think it’s best if I go alone. It shouldn’t take more than an hour; do you want to wait here? We can get dinner or something when I get back.”

She agreed to that. He kissed her quickly before leaving.

Gendry arrived at the law office twenty minutes later. The receptionist showed him to the lawyer’s office. The room was full of boxes, each with a different label. Some of the labels were names— he noticed Mya’s among them— while others said things like ‘clothes’ or ‘misc.’

“Gendry Waters?” asked the man behind the large wooden desk. He was tall and lean, with light brown hair that seemed to be thinning and glasses.

“Yes,” Gendry answered.

The man stuck out his hand, which Gendry shook.

“John Linwood. We spoke on the phone. Take a seat, please.”

Gendry sat opposite Linwood, glancing at the boxes.

“Now if I’ve got this right, you are getting a check for two hundred thousand dollars, as well as a share of Robert’s business.”

Gendry nodded. He listened to John Linwood as he described the specifics of the share that he now owned of his father’s business. When he handed him the check he stared numbly down at the tiny black two that was followed by five zeros.

“There’s this as well,” said Linwood as he handed a small cardboard box to Gendry. “Robert's family wanted you to have that.”

Gendry left without opening the box, tucking it under his arm and holding the paper check in his hand. He walked swiftly to his car, his breath appearing in the air as snow crunched under his boots. He set the check and box on the passenger’s seat carefully.

When Gendry returned to his apartment he found Arya lying in his bed, curled beneath the covers.

“You’ve certainly made yourself comfortable.”

She smiled up at him as he lowered his head to kiss her. The kiss grew heated quickly, her hands reaching up to tangle in his hair.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he said suddenly.

“I thought you would want to stay right here,” she said with a slight smirk.

“This place is kind of a dump.”

She frowned. “I like this dump.”

He laughed at her. “I’ve just been given more money than I know what to do with,” he told her. “We could go anywhere we want tonight.” She grinned up at him wickedly.

“Do you have something in mind?”

The hotel was far nicer than any Gendry had ever stayed at. It was like something out of a movie. He and Arya surely looked out of place, clad in jeans, boots, and winter coats as they entered the lobby. The man at the front desk gave them a peculiar look when they requested a room for just one night, but seemed undisturbed when Gendry’s credit card went through, handing him the room key and directing them toward the elevator.

The room was spacious and well decorated, replete with a mini kitchen, a couple of arm chairs, and a king-sized bed topped with a burgundy duvet. Arya had stopped at home before driving to the hotel, telling her mother that she was staying the night at Willow’s. She plopped the bag she had packed onto the bed, spreading her arms wide as she took in the room. 

“Now we’re really living,” she said to him. “Room service. We need to order room service to make this really official.”

As she flipped through a menu that sat on the small table Gendry lied down on the bed, a feeling very close to happiness washing over him. Why shouldn’t he be happy? Every money-related stress in his life was gone. Since he’d first heard about the money he’d been connecting it to Robert’s death, to his own anger and sense of loss, however minor it may be. But as he gazed over at Arya he didn’t feel those things. All he felt was the warmth and contentment that always seemed to be present when she was with him. She glanced at him then, catching him looking at her.

“What?” she laughed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re just really beautiful,” he said, deciding to tell her how he was feeling.

“Shut up,” she said playfully, but she was blushing bright pink.

“Come here,” he said to her. “We can order food later.”

“Later?” she said suggestively, raising an eyebrow as she set the phone down and walked toward the bed.

“Yes, later.”

She climbed onto the plush mattress beside him, turning to her side so she could face him. He ran his hand over the curve of her hip and in the dip of her waist. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her easily until she was lying on top of him. Her hand came up to cup his cheek, and then she was kissing him, hard and ardently, the type of kiss she had only alluded to back at his apartment. There was a difference in the way she moved her body against him, something that said she was less restrained now.

_You_ did _bring her to a hotel room,_ he told himself. He would of course stop if she wanted to, but the way her hand was now trailing down his abdomen, the way her tongue pushed against his made him think that perhaps this time she wouldn’t want to stop.

She shifted and sat up so that she was straddling his waist, wanting to be in control. She pulled her t shirt up and over her head, revealing a simple black bra. He palmed her breasts in his large hands, sighing happily as he did. She moved her hips in a slow, back and forth motion, like she was testing it out, rubbing against the denim of his jeans and his quickly growing erection. When she moved to take off his shirt he quickly complied. Her hands ran over his chest and stomach like she was curious to see how her touch would affect him. She leaned down to kiss his neck, dragging her lips over the sensitive skin between his neck and shoulder. She pulled away for a moment, and stood up to pull off her jeans.

When he realized what he was doing he sat up, reaching out to still her hands. He pulled her closer to him so that she was standing between his knees. He kissed her slowly, running his hands over her hips before undoing the button of her jeans and pushing them down her legs. She kicked them away and made to kiss him. She let out a startled sort of gasp when he clutched her ass, his hands possessive on her as he kissed her fervently. She pulled away to catch her breath, and his mouth went to her breasts, using his tongue on the soft skin there. She moaned, a soft and low sound that sounded like his name.

“Are we going to have sex?” she blurted out from above him. He pulled back to stare at her. If he were less aroused he would have laughed.

“Is that what you want?” His voice was husky and deep, out of breath from kissing her. He prayed she would say yes, and to his relief she nodded her head quickly.

“Yes,” she breathed. He kissed her deeply, his hand coming up to rest against her face.

“Then let me love you,” he said against her lips. Truth be told he had put no thought into his word choice, but when her eyes widened almost imperceptibly he couldn’t find it within himself to regret it. It felt right in that moment.

His hands went behind her back, deftly unhooking her bra and letting it fall away from her. When he looked at her face her eyes were staring back at him steadily, not nervous in the slightest. His lips and tongue against her newly exposed skin made her cry out, his name definitely among the sounds she made. He picked her up, moving her back onto the bed so that she was lying on her back.

After quickly pulling off his own pants he returned to her, kissing his way down her body until he was situated between her thighs. He put his tongue against her, over the fabric of her underwear.

“Fuck,” she swore sharply. “Gendry, please.”

He pulled her underwear to the side to taste her. Arya was vocal, crying out his name and an assortment of curses while his face was between her legs. She fisted her hands in his hair and dug her heels against his back, actions which only sharpened the ache for her that was coursing through him. He pulled back from her to the sounds of her protest, getting off the bed and fishing his wallet out of his discarded jeans, thumbing through it until he found the small foil packet he was looking for. He pulled off his boxers and sat on the edge of the bed to put the condom on. When he turned to look at her she had taken her underwear off, and was sitting up on her elbows to watch him intently.

Gendry couldn’t recall the last time he had felt shyness around a girl. He was fairly experienced, and had been with a handful of women since he had first lost his virginity to his high school girlfriend at the age of sixteen. But there was something about Arya— about her intensity, about the way he knew she felt about him— that made his cheeks heat under her gaze. He crawled over to her, positioning himself between her legs.

“Hey,” he said softly. Her eyes locked on his.

“I’ve never done this, so go slow, alright?”

He figured that might have been the case. When he nodded at her he saw the trust in her eyes, saw that she was ready. He pushed inside of her slowly, his body covering hers. He kissed her face and neck to distract her from the initial discomfort. When he looked at her face he found her wearing a determined expression.

“You okay?” he asked. He was inside of her, desperately trying not to focus on the feeling of her enveloping him while he remained still. She nodded.

“It just feels… different.”

When he began to move, slowly thrusting in and out of her, her eyes widened as she sucked in a sharp gasp.

“Okay, that feels good,” she said breathily.

“Yeah?”

She moaned in answer when he grasped her hip, bringing her body closer to his as he returned to kissing her neck. Her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms went around his back. The warmth of her naked skin pressed against his was exhilarating, adding even more intimacy between them.

He increased his speed, finding a rhythm that had her gasping for air as her nails tug into the skin of his back. He looked at her face again, at her furrowed brow, her eyes scrunched shut, the hint of sweat on her forehead, reading the frustration there. He broke free of her embrace, pulling out of her.

“Turn over,” he panted.

“Why?” she asked, looking irritated with him for stopping. Gendry leaned forward, kissing her roughly.

“Because I want to make you come,” he breathed against her lips. She complied, turning over and pushing herself up so that she was on her knees and elbows. He positioned himself behind her, leaning forward to place kissed along her spine. When he entered her she let out a shout, the change in sensation from when she was lying on her back surprising her.

His hands roamed over her body, trailing down her back before gripping her hips as he fucked her, as he made love to her. He bent forward, one hand on the mattress to support his weight as the other went to her breasts, tweaking her nipples. When his fingers trailed down to her clitoris he felt her body tense. His hand worked deftly as he once again increased his rhythm, until her breathless gasps became sharp, desperate cries, until he felt her squeeze and spasm around him as her body found release. With a groan and two more hard thrusts into her he was unraveling, hot bursts of pleasure racking through his body as he came.

Rather than collapse onto the bed he rolled off, pulling off the condom and discarding it before rejoining her on the mattress. He kissed her repeatedly, running a hand through her hair as she panted, still out of breath.

“Do you want to take a shower?” she asked. He grinned at her.

They didn’t get around to ordering room service until much later in the night.

They checked out of the hotel the next morning at nine, parting ways in the parking lot. Gendry kissed her like he wouldn’t see her for weeks, though he knew it was likely he would see her the next day, or even later that night.

He made his way over to his car, spotting the box and the check in the passenger’s seat. He figured he had time to go to the bank before heading into work at Mott’s. The cardboard box caught his eye as well, his name scrawled in black marker on the side. When he climbed into the car he pulled the box into his lap, opening the top to reveal its unknown contents.

Inside was a small stack of photographs and a black leather pouch that appeared to have a note attached to it. He flipped through the photographs; most of them were photos of Gendry as a baby or toddler. It would seem that his mother had sent them to Robert, maybe still hopeful in those first few years that the man who had gotten her pregnant would want to raise his own son. He turned one of them over. In neat handwriting were the words ‘He looks so much like you, Robert.’

Gendry clutched the photograph tightly, his heart racing. He reached for the leather pouch then, opening it to reveal a butterfly knife with a silver handle. He read the note, feeling himself grow numb.

_Meant to give this to you a lot sooner._

_-Robert_

He crumpled the note in his hand, throwing the box and its contents across the car. It landed on the floor with a dull thump, some of the pictures spilling out.

_He looks so much like you, Robert._

_Meant to give this to you a lot sooner._

_He looks so much like you, Robert._

He looked like the son of a bitch who had wanted nothing to do with him. He had been a constant reminder to his mother of the man who had knocked her up and then pissed off. And that same son of a bitch had written a note and attached it to a gift he had planned on giving Gendry, probably if Gendry had been willing to meet him when Mya had first called him.

For the first time in years, while sitting in his car in a hotel parking lot, Gendry allowed himself to cry, leaning forward against the steering wheel as he cried for his dead father, his dead mother, and the little boy in those photos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that it took me three weeks to update! Thank you to everyone reading this story and leaving lovely comments. There should be only one, possibly two, more chapters.  
> -K


	6. Family Ties

When Gendry woke the next morning his head was throbbing. The light peeking through his curtains was practically blinding, and his mouth and throat felt as though he had swallowed sand. He groped for his phone on the nightstand, bringing it to his face to check the time.

“Fucking hell,” he swore. He was supposed to be at Mott’s forty five minutes ago. He dragged himself out of bed and dressed quickly, the night of drinking he’d had with Hot Pie and Lommy coming back to him in flashes. He remembered meeting them at the bar, remembered not mentioning the money or the photos or the knife, choosing instead to drink himself stupid.

When he made it out the door of his building, keys in hand, he remembered that they had called him a cab. His car was still in the lot at the bar. Gendry swore again before texting Tobho, explaining that he would be even later than he’d first estimated. He then called a cab to take him to the bar. He sat in the passenger seat during the brief ride, scrolling through his phone and noticing that he had six unread text message and two missed calls— never a good sign after a night of drinking. When he climbed into his own car he saw that they were all from Arya.

 _It could be worse_ , he tried to reason as he drove to work. _You could have texted Jeyne._ Gendry shuddered at the thought. He parked in the lot at Mott’s, quickly reading through Arya’s texts.

_Did you want to see a movie tonight?_

_Gendry?_

_Everything all right?_

A missed call.

_I’m going to guess you’re out drinking with friends, based on the voicemail._

_Have fun, then._

_Call me if you need a ride home._

The second missed call.

Gendry’s heart sank. He had left her a voicemail. And he’d ignored all her texts. Gendry finally made his way into Mott’s, resolving to call her on his lunch break.

Tobho called him into his office, asking him if everything was alright. When he told him his lateness was merely the result of too much alcohol the night before, the older man seemed to consider his words for longer than Gendry would have liked before nodding and letting him get back to work.

When he called Arya during his break she didn’t pick up. When he left work after staying an hour late, he saw that she had texted him.

_Can I come over?_

The text had been sent twenty minutes ago. He told her to come to his place and drove home.

When he buzzed her up and opened his door to her, her face was stern, her eyes hard. She pushed past him and into the apartment.

“So… what the hell was that all about?” she asked, her tone already angry.

“I’m really sorry I didn’t text you,” he began.

“You can’t just… we can’t just…” she began, tripping over her words, stopping and starting before taking a deep breath.

“We had just _had sex_. And then you ignored me. You can’t do that, it— it messes with my head. Trust issues, remember?” she said, her words sounding more frantic than angry.

“Fuck, Arya,” he groaned, his hands coming up to rub over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m an ass.”

“A bit, yeah,” she agreed. “What happened?”

“Went out with Hot Pie and Lommy,” he explained. “Got absolutely shit-faced.”

“I figured as much from the voicemail you left me.”

Gendry squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for the worst. “What did I say?”

“You were pretty incoherent,” Arya replied, but there was color in her cheeks.

“Go on,” he urged.

“Well… you sang,” she said with a smile, not looking him in the eye.

“I _sang_?”

“Yeah, you uh, seemed to have made up a song about me,” she said, laughing. Gendry groaned. 

“I’m sorry you had to endure that.” Arya moved toward him, her hands looping around his waist.

“It was sort of sweet.” He leaned down to kiss her but she pulled back.

“But why did you go out? We had talked about seeing a movie,” she said. Gendry heaved a sigh.

“There’s something I should show you.”

He went and retrieved the knife and the photo with his mother’s writing on the back from his room. He set them down on the kitchen counter. Arya picked up the knife first, pulling the handle apart to reveal the blade. He handed the note to her. When she looked up at him after scanning the paper her eyes were not pitiful. They were understanding.

“There’s this as well,” he said, pushing the photo toward her. She smiled softly when she saw the image of Gendry as a two year old.

“Is this you?” He nodded.

“Turn it over,” he said. When she read the words there she sucked in a sharp breath. He was staring at the floor, like he was afraid of her looking at his face, like he was ashamed to look like his father. She moved forward, wrapping her arms around him. She kissed his cheek softly. His arms came up to hold her, tightly, his fingers clutching the fabric of her shirt. He shifted his head so that his lips met hers. She moaned when his tongue made contact with hers, and the sound spurred him on. A voice in the back of his mind was telling him that he should maybe talk to her about the way he felt, about the way the knife and the photos made him feel. But her mouth was warm and her body was soft beneath his fingertips. He didn’t want to cry to her, he didn’t want to be sad. All he wanted was _her_ : her soft gasps and insistent hands that were fumbling with his belt, her inviting body that was pressing against his.

So he wasted no time with words, picking her up and carrying her to his bedroom. When it was over he lay with his head on her stomach, his hand resting against her hip. Her fingers brushed through his hair.

“I think I’m going to start school in the fall,” she spoke suddenly, breaking the silence in the room.

“I’d been meaning to ask you about that,” he said quietly, thinking about his conversation with Sansa, before drug addictions and dead fathers had distracted him.

“I’m going to take classes at Eastern. It's only forty-five minutes away. So I could still live at home and commute.”

“That makes sense,” he said. 

"And I thought… well, a school in the area makes sense, right? I mean, for us?” When Gendry waited for her to continue her voice seemed to take on a more nervous tone.

“I just mean, I want to be close to you. I want… to be with you.”

He looked up at her. “So you want to be my girl or something?” he asked around a smile, teasing her. “Officially?”

Arya rolled her eyes, but had a smile on her face to match his.

“Yeah, I suppose I do.”

“Good,” he answered, placing a kiss just above her navel.

***

The cold snows of winter turned into the slightly less cold rains of spring. For the most part, Gendry’s routine remained unchanged, though he worked one day a week less at Mott’s, giving him an actual weekend to look forward to. The money mostly just sat in his account, though every once in a while he and Arya would eat at a slightly more upscale restaurant or take a day trip on a Saturday. He figured she had told her family that he was her boyfriend, because he seemed to spend more time around them. Catelyn invited him to the house, and Sansa would get dinner with him and Arya whenever she happened to be in town. His friends gave him shit for it, saying Gendry was “robbing the cradle,” but he knew they were only joking, knew that Hot Pie and Lommy and Anguy all loved Arya. They still went to bars that didn’t card, surrounded by their friends and pitchers of cheap beer. He even maintained contact with Mya, texting or calling her every now and then for the pointless kind of small talk (the “what’s new?” and “how’s your job?”) that he typically hated but didn’t mind terribly when it was his half-sister. A few weeks into summer Mya invited him up to her house for a cook out, telling him that she wanted to meet Arya. She also told him that there were members of her family, other Baratheons, she wanted him to meet.

It took a week of Arya convincing him for Gendry to tell Mya that they’d be there. It was about an hour long drive to get there, and Gendry used the time to focus on anything other than the nerves that filled him at the prospect of meeting people he was related to. He focused on the warm air coming through the car window, and he focused on how ridiculously pretty Arya looked in the summery, cotton dress she was wearing. He’d gaped at her when he picked her up from her house, having never seen her wear something so feminine. She’d punched him in the arm and told him to shut up before he could get a word out.

He knew why she was dressed up. This was important to her, meeting his family, or what she at least called his family. And that meant something to him, that Arya cared so much. It was hard for him to believe a lot of the time, really, that another person cared about his life as much as she did.

“How many people will be there?” she asked from the passenger seat.

“Maybe fifteen or twenty? Mya said it wouldn’t be that big. She seems the type to go all out for these sorts of things, though.”

“Does she?”

“Yeah, I can sorta tell, you know? She seems to always be throwing parties or hosting events. Plus she makes bank.”

“What is it she does, again?”

“Data analysis at some corporation. Sounds boring as hell but apparently pays nicely.”

Gendry wasn’t wrong. When they reached Mya’s house they were both impressed by how nice it was. Mya greeted them at the door, giving both he and Arya a hug, before leading them through her house and out to the back yard.

It really was decorated like something out of a magazine spread, or an article titled “How to Host the Perfect Summer Party.” She introduced Arya and Gendry to a number of her friends until she came to a middle-aged man and a teenage girl sitting at one of the tables.

“Gendry, this is Stannis, Robert’s brother. And his daughter, Shireen.”

The man called Stannis was tall, with short, grey hair and a stern face. His daughter Shireen was no older than sixteen or seventeen, with long brown hair and a burn scar that covered one of her cheeks. Stannis stood and shook Gendry’s hand, his movements mechanical and a bit awkward. Gendry could tell that the man was just as uncomfortable in the current situation as he was. They ate at the same table as his uncle and cousin, and Gendry was thankful for Arya’s ability to make conversation as she easily launched into chatting with the young Baratheon girl about her school and hobbies. Stannis rarely spoke, occasionally glancing at Gendry as he ate.

“Uncle Renly!” Shireen shouted, addressing a man who had just arrived. Gendry knew just by looking at the man that he was related to him; they shared the same dark hair and blue eyes, and had a face shaped similarly. He was tall, though not quite as tall as Gendry. He was accompanied by a shorter blonde man with delicate yet handsome features. Shireen ran to the pair, hugging each of them. Mya made a point of getting up to introduce them.

“Gendry, this is Renly, Robert’s younger brother, and his partner, Loras.” Renly shook his hand.

“It’s great to meet you, Gendry,” the older man said with a smile. Gendry shook Loras’s hand as well before turning to Arya.

“This is Arya, my girlfriend.” It felt both strange and wonderful to tell people that.

The two men joined their table, where they made easy conversation with Arya, Gendry, and Shireen. Renly’s laid back attitude and Loras’s propensity for well-timed jokes made them instantly likable, and the time passed easily. Before long Stannis and Shireen left, Stannis grumbling a curt goodbye while Shireen hugged everyone at their table.

The sun was just beginning to set, and Arya was telling them a story involving Sansa and Bran when Renly suddenly looked at her with a light of recognition in his eyes.

“Are you Arya _Stark_?” he asked. Arya looked surprised.

“Yes…”

Renly laughed. “Well isn’t it a small world? Gendry is dating Ned Stark’s daughter!”

“You knew my dad?” Arya asked, her tone growing more confused.

“I met him a few times. He and Robert were old college friends.”

Arya’s eyebrows rose dramatically as Gendry froze.

“What?” they both let out, nearly in unison. The smile slid from Renly’s face.

“You guys didn’t know?” Gendry shook his head.

“I never met Robert,” Arya said, more to Gendry than to Renly. “My dad never mentioned him.”

Gendry tried to process what he had just heard. Ned Stark had known his father. _Of course._ It seemed so obvious now, and Gendry felt utterly stupid for assuming all those years ago that Ned had known his mother.

Loras changed the topic of conversation soon after, perhaps sensing the tension, but Gendry wasn’t in much of a mood for talking any more. As if she sensed this, Arya gripped his hand under the table.

“I think we’re going to head out,” she said. They said their goodbyes to Renly, Loras, and Mya before heading to Gendry’s car. As they were walking along the side of the house Renly called out to him.

“Gendry!” He was jogging toward him. Arya kept walking, as if she didn’t want to intrude on a personal conversation.

“I’m so glad I got to meet you,” he said. “And look, I’ll be real with you— Robert was a piece of shit for most of his life. And Stannis may seem like an asshole, but if he or I had known— about you, about Mya— we would have helped.” He grasped Gendry’s shoulder.

“I appreciate you saying that,” Gendry said with a nod.

“Take care of yourself,” Renly said before turning back toward the party. Arya was by his car when Gendry caught up to her.

“Are you alright?” she asked, her hand seeking his.

“I’m fine. It’s just… weird.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Let’s go home. Back to yours.”

They spent the hour long drive in silence save for the sound of the music Gendry played to fill in for the lack of conversation. Though he knew she wanted to go back to his place he drove them to her house instead.

“Your mom will probably want you home. You’ve been out all day,” he said by way of explanation.

“Well come inside. We’ll watch a movie with Rickon or something,” she said.

“I kind of just want to be alone right now.” He stared straight ahead through the windshield and out at the darkened neighborhood, the streetlamps glowing white.

She sighed, and Gendry didn’t have to look at her to know that she was frustrated.

“Why are you shutting me out?”

“I’m not,” he said, a note of irritation in his voice.

“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “Look, I didn’t know that my dad knew him.”

“He really never told you about Robert? He never told you how I ended up working for your family?”

“No!” she said indignantly. “I was a kid! I don’t ever remember my dad talking about a Robert Baratheon.”

“Your mom must know. Your dad must have told her.”

“I don’t know, Gendry. Look, we can ask her,” she said, moving to get out of the car. He grabbed her arm, stilling her.

“No,” he said. He didn’t want a confrontation with Catelyn at that moment. “Let’s just go back to my place.”

“You sure?” she asked. He nodded.

They lounged on his couch for most of the night, watching the shitty reality programs that they loved to laugh at together. He had just pulled her into his lap and was kissing her neck when she spoke.

“I think we should move in together,” she said. Leave it to Arya to blurt out something like that while his hands were under her dress. He pulled back from her.

“What?”

“I think we should get our own place together,” she continued. “A place just off campus. I’d still be close to my mom but I’d have a bit of independence. Plus we’d be living together,” she said with an excited smile.

“What does your mom think about this?” he asked, not yet knowing how to respond.

“I’ve floated the idea to her… right now she’s a bit lukewarm, but I have time to convince her.”

Gendry didn’t know what to say. He was shocked that Arya was ready for that level of commitment, when he didn’t feel anywhere near it.

“It’s… a possibility,” he said, keeping his words vague.

“I thought you’d be a bit more excited,” she said, sounding crestfallen.

“It’s just… a lot, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” she said, moving to sit beside him.

“You’re starting school this fall, which I think is great,” he began. “But when I first found out about the money all I could think about was leaving town. Just getting away for a while.”

It was true. He’d fantasized about taking a leave of absence from Mott’s and flying out of the country to someplace warmer, someplace he didn’t have to think about his mother and his shitty childhood and Robert Baratheon. Until she told him her plans for school he had pictured Arya with him.

“You’re just going to leave, then?” she asked, sounding angry.

“Not for good,” he said. “And I thought— before— that maybe you would come with.”

“I can’t just run away with you, Gendry. My family is here. I can’t leave them again.”

Gendry nodded but said nothing, staring down at the floor.

“Why— why are you trying to run away from everything?”

“What?” he said sharply, looking up at her.

“That’s what this is about, this idea of getting away. This is about you not being able to deal with everything that’s happened.” She was standing now, so he stood up beside her.

“What the hell are you talking about, Arya?” he questioned, but she didn’t back down.

“This is about your father dying,” she said, her words slow and careful but resolute. “It’s this— _thing_ — that’s been looming over you since it happened!”

He shook his head, glaring at her.

“It’s true! Don’t you think I would know? When my dad died I did the same thing, I tried to escape it.”

“No,” he said, his anger hot in the pit of his stomach. “Do not tell me that it’s the fucking same. Don’t tell me it’s the same when you had an actual father for fifteen years when all I had was a fucking name!” He was shouting now, like he was taking all of the anger he’d had pent up over the whole ordeal and releasing it at her. “Don’t tell me it’s the same when you ran away when you were sixteen and got addicted to drugs, don’t act like I’m making the same mistakes you did!”

For a moment she looked like she wanted to hit him, her fists clenching at her sides as her chest heaved.

“I fucked up, okay? You’re right,” she said, her voice cold and calm. “But I know how you’re feeling, I—”

“You don’t!” he interjected. “You don’t know how it feels to be unwanted! How it feels to grow up without a family—”

“You’re right!” she yelled, her voice frenzied. “I don’t know what any of that feels like because you never fucking tell me! You never talk to me about these things, or anything you’ve been through!”

“That’s what you want to hear about?” he said heatedly. “You want to know what it felt like for my mother to die when I was barely old enough to remember?” Tears coated her eyes but he continued. “You want to know what it felt like to grow up in foster care? To get the shit kicked out of me by the older kids? To think I was going to get adopted, only to be told that those families didn’t want me either?”

Arya stood her ground, staring at him as a tear slowly fell from the corner of her eye.

“Just why the _fuck_ would you want to know about any of that?” he bit out. He didn’t know why he was so angry at her for caring.

“Because,” she said, sucking in a breath, “because I love you.”

Gendry ran a hand over his face.

“Don’t. Don’t say that.”

“What is wrong with you?” she said, her eyes shooting daggers at him. That was good. It was easier if she was angry. “Why are you doing this? Why can't you be with me?”

“Do you really think we have a future together?” he asked her. The look on her face was like he had just slapped her. “You think your mom would let you live with someone like me?”

“ _Someone like you_?” she hissed, her voice a mix of fury and disbelief. “What the hell does that even mean, Gendry?”

She wasn’t stupid, but she was playing dumb. She knew full-well what he meant.

“Don’t act like there aren’t differences between us, Arya. Don’t act like I’m the type of person your family wants you to end up with. Your dad pitied me, he wouldn’t want you—”

She cut him off with a sharp smack across the face. The pain was sharp— she was stronger than she looked— but he figured he deserved it. When he looked up at her she was crying, really crying, and the sight of it made him hate himself. She shook her head. 

“Don’t you fucking dare,” she said, her voice shaky.

Gendry wanted to tell her he loved her, that he was doing this _because_ he loved her, because she deserved better. But he said nothing, only watching her as she moved across the room to grab her purse. He said nothing when she wrenched open the front door, and he said nothing when she slammed it shut behind her, leaving him alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was tough to write. There will most likely be only one more after this! Reviews make my day.  
> -K


	7. Simple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, the last chapter. Thank you to everyone who read, followed, and commented on this story. Writing a multi-chapter story was definitely a ride.  
> -K

Gendry knew he had ruined things, or at least irrevocably changed them, the moment she slammed the door. From that point on he passed through each day and its routine in a state of dull numbness, doing his best not to think of her. His apartment seemed to be full of reminders; she had left a box of leftovers in his fridge, she had a pair of sweatpants in his bedroom, a handful of her hair ties were scattered across his bathroom counter.

He told Tobho that in a month’s time he would be taking a week off of work. He had no idea where he wanted to go, but figured that a week’s time in a different place would clear his head. He informed Willow of his plans to take a trip while sitting opposite her at her desk in the office at the foster center.

“Where are you going?” she asked excitedly.

“Don’t know yet,” he said. “I might just choose at random.”

“And Arya’s going with you?”

Gendry felt a pang somewhere in his chest as he looked away from Willow and instead stared down at the wooden surface of her desk. Arya must not have told her, then.

“We, uh… we broke up,” he said quietly. “About a week ago.”

Willow’s eyes were soft and sad when she asked what happened.

“We just… wanted different things from the relationship.” He wasn’t about to delve into the details of their fight.

“She wanted commitment,” Willow muttered, more to herself than to him.

“What does that mean?”

“I’m sorry,” she said hurriedly, “I shouldn’t assume. It’s just—” she paused, closing her eyes and taking a breath before continuing. “It’s just Jeyne sort of said something about that… that you… that that’s why you guys broke up.”

“Did she?” Gendry asked, his voice toneless. Willow looked apologetic.

“I don’t know why I brought it up, I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s fine, really, Will,” he said before getting up to leave.

If he thought about it he supposed that what Jeyne had apparently told her sister was true. Though they dated for just over a year Gendry had never felt like they were in it for the long haul. Towards the end Jeyne had wanted him to come with her to the opposite side of the country to meet and stay with her parents for a week, and Gendry had realized then that she was way more serious about him than he was about her. He told himself that with Arya it was different— that he had ended things because she deserved better. That was what he told Mya, too, when he stopped to visit her on his way out of town a month later. Her house was practically on the way to the airport, and he called her to ask if he could see her before he left. He hadn’t been able to talk to anyone about Arya— Willow had brought up Jeyne, Hot Pie and Lommy had called him an idiot and left it at that. He sensed that he could discuss it with Mya. Maybe it had something to do with the two of them being related, but Gendry had never known much about that. The way he saw it, she was removed enough to be impartial while being practical and trustworthy enough to be worth listening to.

Gendry sat at her kitchen table as she poured him a cup of coffee, telling her of their fight and breakup. Mya set the mug in front of him and sat down.

“Is that really what you think? That you’re not good enough for this girl?”

Gendry sat back in his chair and considered the question.

“It’s not like I have some inferiority complex. It’s just… she’s going places in her life. She’s going to school, and—”

“Gendry,” Mya interrupted. She was eyeing him skeptically. “I’m sorry, but, that all sounds like bullshit to me.”

Gendry nearly choked on his coffee.

“What I think… is that you’re scared.”

“Scared?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

“I think the second things started to become real— her meeting your family, her asking you to move in— you got scared. But it’s not commitment you’re afraid of.”

“What is it, then?” Gendry challenged.

“You’re afraid to let someone love you. To be vulnerable with someone.”

He scoffed, hiding the impact her words had on him.

“I know it sounds like psychoanalytical nonsense, but listen. I was the same way.”

He furrowed his brows at her. His half-sister did not seem even a quarter as fucked up as he apparently was.

“It has to do with not being loved when you’re a kid. You start to convince yourself, subconsciously, that you don’t deserve it. My mom didn’t want me. The pregnancy was an accident. Maybe deep down she loved me, but she was horrible at showing it.”

Gendry realized that neither he nor Mya had ever talked to one another about their mothers. They had only ever discussed Robert.

“I’m not trying to make assumptions. To be honest, I have no idea what you went through growing up, Gendry.”

She reached out, grasping his hand across the table.

“No matter what happened, you deserve to be happy. You have to go after what makes you happy.”

Gendry thought about Arya, about her lying in his bed, about her falling asleep on his shoulder when they stayed up late to watch bad movies. He thought about the night he saw her outside the bar after all those years, about how her eyes had pierced right fucking through him, making him feel something the likes of which he had never come in contact with before. He thought about the way she sang loudly to the songs on the radio when they drove somewhere, he thought about the way she would carelessly take his hand in hers whenever they were walking beside one another.

He nodded at Mya.

“Yeah. Yeah I do, don’t I?” He laughed, like everything had suddenly become entirely too simple for it to have taken him so long to figure out. Mya smiled at him.

“Go to her, then.”

It was all he needed to hear. When he got back in his car his plans of heading to the airport were dashed. Taking a trip was suddenly the furthest thing from his mind. He headed back toward town, figuring that he would just go straight to her house. He suddenly felt the full force of how much he missed her, and he was suddenly terrified that she would refuse to speak to him. He tried to think of what he could say to her as he made his way toward her neighborhood. By the time he parked in her driveway, hours later, his body was filled with nervous energy and his hands were clammy on the steering wheel. It was dark, the sun having set a few hours ago. Given the late hour and the fact that Catelyn Stark was the last person he wanted to talk to, Gendry chose to call Arya rather than ring the doorbell.

She didn’t answer, but her thought he saw someone at the upstairs window, the curtain flickering to reveal the only light on in the house. He sat in her driveway for ten minutes, his heart racing as he anticipated her coming out. Just as he put his car in reverse, ready to leave and try calling her tomorrow, the front door swung open.

It was Arya.

She marched to his car, not looking at him as she opened the door and sat in the passenger’s seat. Before he could open his mouth she spoke.

“If my mother sees you here she might kill you, so you’re going to need to drive while you talk.”

Her tone was cold but not cutting. Gendry stared at her for a beat before backing his car out of the drive, intending to drive around her neighborhood.

“I’m an idiot,” was the first thing he could think to say. She snorted.

“You’re right about that,” she said tonelessly. He glanced over at her. She was wearing a pair of cotton pajama shorts and a large t shirt, and her hair was still wet from the shower.

Gendry pulled to the side of the road. They were a couple blocks from her house.

“Why are you stopping?” she asked.

“I’m in love with you,” he said, looking over at her. “And I can’t tell you I love you while I’m driving— I can’t not look at you while I say it.”

Her eyes snapped to his, wide and alert and staring right through him just like they always did. Gendry took a breath, then another. And for once he told her everything.

He told her why he’d been scared of her loving him. He told her about things from his childhood, the things that he supposed contributed to him feeling like he didn’t deserve love. He told her how his father’s death made him feel, and he told her that he was sorry— for taking those feelings out on her, for the things he said to her when they fought. They sat in his car and talked for nearly two hours, and by the end Gendry felt like he had spent the majority of that time telling her about the way she made him feel— how much he loved her, how happy she made him.

She didn’t leap into his arms, she didn’t lean in and kiss him. She listened. She listened to everything he had to say, and because of that alone he knew that it wasn’t over.

When he dropped her off at her house she told him she needed a bit of time to think, but the way she looked at him as she got out of his car made Gendry’s heart beat against his ribs.

***

He gave Arya the space she asked for. He could wait for her, if that’s what it would take. He went back to work and continued his routine of normalcy. Every once in a while he found himself taking the butterfly knife out of his dresser drawer, holding it in his hand or pulling apart the handle, thinking of the man who had been, biologically, his father, but not much else.

As July drew to a close, Hot Pie asked him if he was doing anything for his birthday.

“You’ve got the money to go all out, you know,” Hot Pie teased. Gendry considered it. Had he and Arya been a couple again he supposed they would’ve taken a weekend trip together. But all he wanted to do was drink beer with his friends at their favorite bar. So those were the plans that they made.

He texted Arya the night before to invite her to come. He didn’t expect a text back, and he knew she wouldn't show.

Hot Pie picked him up the night of his birthday, as he was the designated driver for the evening. They drove to the hole in the wall place they all loved, where the beer was cheap and the bartender knew their names. Lommy and Anguy were seated at a table already, greeting Gendry enthusiastically when he sat down, clapping him on the back and calling him an old man. Willow showed up thirty minutes later, giving Gendry a hug and a kiss on the cheek before sitting down next to him.

Lommy was ordering a round of shots for the table when Gendry realized he was sitting in the chair that faced the door. He’d glance up from time to time, watching people walk in and walk out. He did a shot, trying and doing a damn good job of enjoying himself. Anguy was in the middle of a story, Hot Pie was getting up to order some kind of greasy bar food, and Willow was laughing loudly beside him when Gendry heard the door open and looked up.

She was wearing the dress she had worn on her own birthday. She glanced around the bar, scanning the meager crowd for him. He watched her, waiting for her to find him, something like joy filling his chest as a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

Arya’s eyes finally found his, grey irises shining as she held his gaze. Slowly, she returned his smile, and Gendry knew that he was going to be just fine.

 

**FIN**


End file.
